27. Coors and Sundresses
TWENTY-SEVEN
Coors and Sundresses
Harry
T hat afternoon, Harry was in his office with Rus, running the day down.
The crux of what both of them had was dick.
No one knew where the Dietrichs were.
They had a son, Gerald Jr., who lived in Virginia, was some kind of lobbyist in DC, who did answer his phone.
And he reported he hadn’t heard from his parents in weeks but reiterated the lie they were in Seattle seeing to a relative. He wasn’t stupid enough to claim his grandma was still alive. He told Karen it was some great aunt once removed or some shit.
He then probably got right on his parents and told them they were fucked, but Harry’s team couldn’t do anything about that.
Pressure sometimes worked. Sometimes, people who did tremendously stupid shit smartened up when it went south, and their best bet was to sort it out or it would just get worse.
But it usually had to get pretty damned bad for them to pull their heads out of their asses.
The condo they told people they’d bought in Seattle to live in to look after Gerald Dietrich’s mother was not a condo they owned or lived in. As such, no one in his office knew where he was. But they did know, if he got in touch, they were to report it and tell Dietrich he needed to get in contact with the Fret County Sheriff immediately.
Deputies spent the day running down Kimmy’s list of businesses that the Dietrichs received goods and services from on account.
All of them reported the same thing Kimmy did. Non-payment for months, promises of restitution, weaponizing their attitude and entitlement to get people to back off, eventually making the debt good paying cash and not doing business with them again.
In fact, it seemed the Dietrichs ended up only living and maybe doing their grocery shopping in MP, otherwise, they’d burned all their bridges at shops, bars, restaurants, even the golf club.
A few of these vendors and businesses had threatened legal action, and got close to it, but Gerald and Michelle ponied up before that happened.
And this added pressure might have been why they took things to extremes.
Kimmy’s word was corroborated about living quiet too.
The Dietrichs might take most of their custom out of town, but deputies were told by a number of people, after the public money problems, the alleged robbery and the Rainiers going missing, the Dietrichs kept a low profile.
He worked at his export business, dealing mostly in sporting goods, with a focus on hunting gear and air rifles. She had a few friends she’d visit. Both came from money to begin with.
Other than that, they didn’t pull their Lord and Lady of Misted Pines bullshit at all.
Not since the Rainiers disappeared.
And now that the file was reopened, they were gone.
That said a lot to Harry, and it said the same thing to Rus.
Rus was hitting up banks and credit cards. Gerald and Michelle had two vehicles under license, and they had alerts out to other agencies to pick them up as persons of interest in a violent crime if their cars were spotted, and they were waiting for warrants to track cell phones.
Fortunately, the Feds were all up in this, and they could get shit done a lot faster than the locals.
It was the same with Cheryl Ballard, Karl Abernathy and Roy Farrell, just without federal backup.
Cheryl had called in sick the last two days at the bookkeeping firm where she worked.
Abernathy had put out a PI shingle in a neighboring town, and he wasn’t in his office when Harry’s deputies swung around. Harry had not bumped up against him since he left, so he figured Abernathy was doing cheating spouse cases, if he was getting any casework at all considering how little he was liked, and the state of his office. It was in a strip mall, and a
Google search Harry did on it showed a facade that wasn’t anything to get excited about.
Farrell had called in sick that day.
They too had alerts on them and their vehicles, and Sean was working on warrants for Abernathy and Farrell’s bank records and cell phones.
Tomorrow, they’d dig into friends, family and co-workers.
Unfortunately, all these fucks were going to make them work for it.
Harry just hoped something came of it.
They were wrapping things up when the screen lit on his phone with a call from Jason.
He glanced at Rus, who was staring at Harry’s phone.
Then he took the call and put it on speaker.
“Hey, Jace,” he greeted. “You’re on speaker and Rus is with me.”
“I’m here with Jess and Lynda, and you’re on speaker too,” he said. “Wade left. We told him we’d brief you. He wanted to get on the road with the Rainiers.”
Harry mentally made a note to tell Polly to call Pullman’s and give them a heads up.
“You have a look at those journals?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, we fuckin’ did,” Lynda’s voice came over the line.
Harry again looked to Rus. Rus’s mouth was tight.
So was Harry’s.
He loosened it to remark, “I sense anger.”
“These were good people, guess you know,” Lynda sniped. “I wanna say I love my husband that much, but Avery Rainier loved her husband like she met him the day before and Cupid got cute. And I suspect you know she thought her daughter filled every day with rainbows.”
Harry clenched his teeth.
Jason took over.
“The entries aren’t long, not until the last few weeks. Just thoughts, feelings, things she wanted to remember, sometimes stuff she wanted to bitch about. Then she got into specifics. Apparently, Dietrich was a good client of Sonny’s. Though, how he was often annoyed Avery. She wrote in her journal they expected Sonny to be at their beck and call. She wrote she wouldn’t put it past them to call at two in the morning if they woke up cold and turned up the furnace, and the temperature didn’t rise within seconds. She also wrote that Sonny didn’t mind. He said it kept him in Coors and his two girls in sundresses.”
Harry closed his eyes.
Coors and sundresses .
Fuck.
He opened them when Jace kept talking. “Thing was, Gerald Dietrich stopped paying Sonny’s invoices.”
Again, he caught Rus’s eyes, because they knew all about that.
Jace kept going.
“The amount in arrears got pretty extreme, Sonny went to collect what he was owed and overheard Gerald talking to someone he thought was Leland Dern, seeing as there was a sheriff’s cruiser in the drive and he knew Dern was tight with Dietrich. They were talking about the financial jam Dietrich was in and how, if some things disappeared, the insurance company could help him out. Sonny told Avery Dietrich also spoke of finding a ‘fall guy.’”
“Goddamn it,” Harry gritted.
“My thoughts exactly,” Lynda agreed heatedly.
Jace came back to them.
“Sonny put this together, came home, and he and Avery didn’t know what to do about it considering they couldn’t report it to Dern. However, they realized very quickly that Gerald somehow found out Sonny overheard, or they just picked him as their fall guy, and as such, they both noted Gerald and his wife Michelle, not to mention Dern, seemed to be stalking them over the next few days. Worried that Sonny was going to be set up, and the ‘long arm of Leland Dern’ meant they’d have to go farther afield to find law enforcement to report this to, they quickly made worst-case-scenario arrangements for Lillian. They were proved right. Dern hauled them in to question them about the robbery. Once they were released, they took off.”
Dern picked Sonny, Harry knew it.
He picked him because he had his eye on Avery.
“Hang on a second,” he said to his phone, then hit the intercom button to Polly.
“Yeah, Harry?” she answered.
“Get a call in to whoever has jurisdiction where Dern lives. We need to start coordinating who’s going to go get his ass. I want him in an interrogation room as soon as feasibly possible.”
“On it,” she said.
He went back to the crew in Idaho. “I can confirm that the Dietrichs were paid out for the insurance claim on the robbery. I can also confirm they were spreading cash around town to make good on debts they’d racked up, which I can assume was cash they had for selling their own stolen property.”
“Fuckin’ assholes,” Jess muttered in the background.
“We got more,” Lynda said. “There were prints on the gun found in that grave. We ran them through AFIS. No hits. Your ex-sheriff would be in the system, so he’s out on that, since we also got confirmation that the bullets in the bodies came from that gun.”
He knew Dern didn’t pull the trigger.
Now he just wondered if Dern knew who did.
“Also, Sonny’s wallet and Avery’s purse have not been found,” Lynda reported. “The plate they registered at the hotel for their car put it as a rental. It was found abandoned within a couple of days of them disappearing from the motel and returned to the rental car agency. Nothing came of that. It was in good nick, and they’d paid for it for a week up front, so the rental company didn’t make a fuss. Why no one asked further questions about the people who rented it, I have no clue. Except for the fact that request would go to your sheriff, so maybe they did, and those inquiries died in Fret County. We sent more boys out to where the bodies were found to have a better look around to see if we can find the wallet and purse.”
“Right,” Harry said.
“We got motive with that journal, but big gaping holes everywhere,” Lynda stated. “Why didn’t they go direct to the police? Why did they leave the motel? Why were they up on that mountain? The missing purse, wallet. And who was in that parking lot the owner saw? We got people canvassing. Long time ago, not many folks in those areas are the same now as they were then. We’re trying to track down anyone who worked in that area to see if memories can be jogged. Sonny and Avery had to eat. Maybe a waitress remembers them. And maybe she’ll remember a white guy with dark hair and a beard too. Maybe pigs will fly, but I don’t mind my bacon raining from above. Bacon’s bacon. I’ll take it as I can get it.”
“Good, Lynda,” Harry muttered, thinking she was hilarious, and he liked how invested she was in this, but he was also feeling what he rarely felt in this job, no matter how tragic or hectic or frustrating it could get.
Heavy.
So fucking heavy.
Coors and sundresses and the words of a woman in her journal, sharing how much she loved her husband, twenty plus years down the line of being with him.
Fuck.
Him .
“One other thing,” Jace said. “In Avery’s suitcase, there was a letter with postage on it. It’s addressed to Lillian. They had to open it, and it explains they had to leave to keep themselves and her safe. They couldn’t tell her they were going, or why, also to keep her safe, but Avery promised they’d be in touch soon and they’d come back as soon as they could.”
If they’d posted that letter, she would have known.
If they’d posted that letter, she could have found her way to some honest cop who might have found answers for her sooner.
If they’d posted that letter, she wouldn’t have had to live sixteen years, wondering, scared, trying to hold on to hope, and honing her skills with denial.
This news gutted Harry so completely, he had to put an elbow to his desk and his forehead in his hand.
“Wade has copies of the journal and the letter,” Jess entered the conversation. “And I know this won’t make you feel any better, but they made Coeur D’Alene the day they left Misted Pines. They were only running for a day, Harry, before they were caught. But they were only running for a day. It’s not much of anything, but it’s still something.”
He was right.
It wasn’t much of anything.
They were one sleep away from hitting a police department and setting their life to rights.
But at least Lillian’s parents weren’t out of their minds with worry, hunted for days, or even weeks, before they were found and relieved of their lives.
So it totally wasn’t much of anything.
But it was still something.