Chapter Twelve #2
Carla Whittingham was sitting on the porch steps with Beau standing beside her. She looked up when her husband came through the door in cuffs and pressed her lips together.
“You said they’d never find out,” she said quietly.
Whittingham said nothing.
Hud handed him off to Beau and looked at Carla. “We’ll need you to come with us as well, Mrs. Whittingham.”
She nodded like she’d been expecting it for a long time. “I know.”
They drove them to the sheriff’s office in Whitefish in silence. Nobody said a word the entire way.
Hud sat across from Whittingham in the interrogation room at the sheriff’s office and let the silence do its work. Whittingham sat with his hands folded on the table, trying to look calmer than he was. The sweat at his temples gave him away.
“How long have you known Harold White?”
“Years. We did legitimate business together for a time.”
“When did it stop being legitimate?”
Whittingham looked at the table. “About two years ago. He came to me with a proposition. Said he was losing money on the dealership and needed another income stream to dig himself out.”
“And your role was what exactly?”
Whittingham was quiet for a moment. “I have contacts. Buyers who don’t ask too many questions about where their beef comes from. Harold would bring me the cattle and I’d move them. That’s all I did.”
“You sold stolen cattle.”
“I facilitated a transaction.”
Hud stared at him. “You want to try that again without the lawyer talk?”
Whittingham exhaled slowly, like a man releasing something he’d been holding onto for a long time. “Yes. I sold the cattle. Harold handled everything else, the trucks, the men, all of it. I didn’t know anything about any insurance fraud until recently.”
“But you knew the cattle you were selling were stolen.”
The silence stretched out long enough to fill the room.
“Yes.” The word came out quietly, almost to himself. “I knew.”
“How did White approach you?”
Whittingham shifted in his chair, hands folded on the table in front of him like a man in church.
“Two years ago. Showed up here out of nowhere, which surprised me since Harold and I had never been what you’d call friendly.
” He paused. “He said he had cattle to move and needed someone with clean contacts to sell them through. Said there’d be good money in it, and nobody would ever know. ”
“And you agreed.”
“Not right away.” His jaw tightened. “But he was persuasive. And the money was—” He stopped. “I made a bad decision. I knew it then and I know it now.”
“Has your wife been involved all along?” Beau asked from across the room.
Whittingham looked at him, then back at the table. “No. She was angry that I would even consider talking to Harold.” His voice dropped. “But I talked her into it. That’s the part I’ll have the hardest time living with.”
Hud stayed silent for a moment. “You knew an agent had been shot during one of White’s operations.”
“I heard about it afterward.” Whittingham looked up for the first time in a while, his eyes tired and flat. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with that. Violence was never part of what I agreed to.”
“But you kept selling the beef after it happened.”
Whittingham said nothing. His hands stayed folded on the table.
“How much did you make off this operation?”
A long pause. “Enough.”
Hud leaned back and studied him. A man who had known better every step of the way and kept going anyway. There was no anger left in it, just the particular weariness of watching someone reckon with what they’d chosen.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Hud said. “You’re going to give me the names of every buyer you sold that beef to. Every transaction, every dollar amount, everything you have. And you’re going to do it today.”
Whittingham nodded slowly. “Alright.”
“Your wife. What did she know?”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Everything.” He took a deep breath. “She kept the books.”
Hud stood. “Then you’d both better start talking.”
Carla Whittingham waived her right to an attorney and gave them everything without hesitation.
Dates, names, dollar amounts, all of it laid out with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had been waiting for this moment longer than anyone in the room realized.
Hud got the impression she was relieved it was finally over.
As Hud and some of the men were talking, a deputy led Harold White, Sr. into the room.
“I want this one,” Hud said quietly and followed them in.
White sat at the table in handcuffs, the deputy standing behind him. He gave Hud a short nod.
“Deputy.”
“Agent. I’ll be right outside.” The deputy stepped out and pulled the door behind him.
Hud set a small recorder on the table, then stood against the wall with his arms folded and stared at White, who glared back at him. Hud grinned.
“Am I supposed to be intimidated by that?”
“Fuck you, Agent.”
Hud pulled out the chair across from him, sat down and folded his hands on the table. “You have a long road ahead of you.”
“For what?”
Hud raised an eyebrow. “Rustling, selling stolen livestock, destroying evidence, two counts of attempted murder. For starters.”
“For starters?”
“The agent you shot is barely hanging on. If he dies, I will personally see to it that you face the death penalty.”
“What makes you think I’m the one who shot him?”
“You were the one yelling out there. I recognize your voice.” Hud shrugged. “That’s enough for me.”
White shook his head. “You have no real proof.”
Hud sat back and folded his arms. “Every man with you will talk. They’ll give you up without a second thought for a lighter sentence. Fitch already gave you up. So did Whittingham and his wife. And your ex-wife.” He paused. “And then there’s Tanner Whitman.”
He watched the color drain from White’s face and said nothing.
White looked at him. “I want a lawyer.”
Hud pushed back from the table, stood and placed both hands flat on the surface, leaning forward.
“You’re going to need one. But there will be no deal.
I want you to get life without the possibility of parole, unless the agent dies.
..” he let that hang, walked to the door and waved the deputy back in. “He wants a lawyer.”
“He’s going to need one,” the deputy said.
“Get him out of here.”
The deputy took White by the arm and lifted him from the chair, steering him toward the door. Hud stopped them just before they cleared the threshold.
“I hope you rot in hell,” Hud said. Then he nodded for the deputy to take him.
“Wait.” White’s voice came out smaller than before. “I’ll talk. I want a deal.”
“I told you. No deal. Not with an agent fighting for his life because of you.”
White was silent for a moment, then he sighed, sat down and talked. All of it. How he’d brought Whittingham in, how the money had looked easy, how each man had told himself it was just business. The exact location of the burned Peterbilt trucks, along with the tires.
Hud’s jaw tightened. “You stole livestock from ranchers whose entire livelihood depends on those animals. You think that’s just business?”
White said nothing.
Hud looked at the deputy. “Get him out of here. Let him sit until his lawyer shows up.”
He picked up the recorder, walked out of the conference room and out of the building.
It was over.
****
Blair was on her second cup of coffee when she heard his truck pull into the driveway.
She looked at the clock. Later than she’d expected but not so late that she’d been worried.
Much. He had told her when he got back to Clifton that it would be a few days before he could see her and she’d heard the hesitation in his voice, the worry that she’d be angry.
She wasn’t. It was his job and he had to finish it before anything else. She understood that now.
She met him at the door. He looked tired, the kind that went deeper than just a long day, but there was something settled in his expression that hadn’t been there before he left.
“You got them,” she said.
“All of them.” He stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. He hung his hat on the rack and leaned back against the wall and just looked at her for a moment.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on top of her head. She felt him exhale slowly, like he’d been holding it in all day. “I am now.”
She slid her arms around his waist and held on.
“Hungry?” she asked after a while.
“Starving.”
“I made soup. It’s still warm.”
She felt him smile against her hair. “Of course you did.”
She pulled back and looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means you take care of people.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It means I’m a lucky man.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then turned toward the kitchen. “Come on. Sit down and eat.”
He sat at the kitchen table, and she set a bowl in front of him along with a thick slice of bread from the loaf she’d picked up at Sweet Nothings that morning. He looked at it and then at her.
“You’ve been busy.”
“I had a long day waiting to hear from you. Keeping busy helped.”
He picked up the spoon and ate without talking for a while and she let him. She’d learned that about him already. He needed quiet to decompress after a hard day, to let the work settle before he could put it down. She understood that. She was the same way.
“Whittingham talked,” he said finally. “So did his wife. We have everything we need.”
“Good.” She watched him. “And White?”
“In custody. He’s not going anywhere.” He broke off a piece of bread. “It’s done, Blair. The whole thing.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “Then it’s over.”
“Yeah.” He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers. “It’s over.”
They sat like that for a while, the kitchen quiet around them. Blair thought about how natural it felt, him at her table, his hand in hers, the simple ordinary comfort of it. She thought about Celine and Killian and how what she’d wanted was exactly this.