Chapter 13
Cash stepped into Colcord’s office. She liked the smell of it, of old leather and books, and the atmosphere was more like a study than an office.
It was the complete opposite of her own.
A large bookshelf covered one wall, lined with Jonah Hex and Lone Ranger graphic novels, a complete shelf of Louis L’Amour hardbacks, along with books on fishing and hiking.
An old bridle hung on one wall, above a bronze sculpture of a cowboy on a bucking horse.
Several pictures were hung neatly on another wall, and as Cash stepped closer, she realized one was a photo of a young Colcord with a full head of hair, looking handsome and fit, laughing as he slung an arm across the shoulder of a burly man in a cowhide vest. A modest barn stood behind them, a field of purple--and--green alfalfa beyond that.
“Just hung that one. Me at twenty and my dad,” Colcord explained, shuffling a huge sheaf of papers that cluttered his desk. “He was a real cowboy. Earned his stripes through a lifetime of calluses, rope burns, and dusty Justins.”
“Wow, you look like you could have been on the cover of a magazine. What happened?”
Colcord looked at her with a half smile. “The stress of working with you aged me beyond my years.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” Cash said, with a laugh.
Colcord gestured for Cash to sit in the empty leather chair across the table from him. “Want some coffee?”
Cash nodded, and Colcord busied himself peeling open a new jar of instant Bustelo.
“I didn’t know you liked Bustelo,” Cash said.
“I don’t. Stuff’s awful.”
Cash wondered why he had a new jar in his office if he didn’t like it. “Well, thanks … I guess.”
Colcord settled down across from her, with an espresso for himself pulled from a fancy machine in one corner.
“Got an update about the wafers. Followed up with that convent in the town of Penne, Italy. Convento di Santa Chiara Offreduccio.”
“Yeah?”
“Apparently, they make wafers specially for priests conducting the conservative Tridentine Mass, but they only sell within Italy. Our killers, or their supplier, must have brought them into the US themselves. They were pretty cagey about their clients, but they claim that none were sold to Americans.”
“So basically a dead end,” Colcord replied.
“Not totally. We now know the murderers might not be American or at least were in Italy at some point.”
“What’s the Tridentine Mass?” Colcord asked.
“A Mass that the traditionalist Catholics want to resurrect. I looked it up. Very formal and all in Latin—-not like modern--day Mass. Now let’s see what you got,” Cash said.
Colcord slapped down a file and opened it. On top was a standard search warrant for a cell phone and another for a sat phone, followed by documents with rows of phone numbers on them. He laid a black satellite phone next to them.
“I had a deputy go out and collect Margie’s Iridium sat phone through a warrant.
The parameters of the warrant allow us to search outgoing and incoming calls and texts during her visits to Willy Grooms’s cabin.
I plugged in the GPS location data and narrowed down the scope of our search to these ninety--eight days that she visited the cabin, which occurred over the course of several years.
That’s the warrant we served on BlueCosmo, the company that provides sat service for Iridium, and got back these call records and text messages on those dates as well—-so we can cross--reference in case she’s deleted anything.
So … what we need to do now is run these numbers through TLO and Accurint.
And here’s a stack of her text messages to read through.
” Colcord paused. “And last but not least, I brought pecan buns from the Ore House for sustenance.” He whisked a box of pastries from under his desk and opened it, shoving it under her nose.
Cash eyed them: flaky, gooey, buttery. Colcord’s café—-the Ore House—-was legendary when it came to pastries—-all family recipes. “You’re killing me, Colcord.”
“A cheat day won’t hurt.”
“Damn you,” she said, and picked one up. It was still warm. She bit into it with her eyes closed, savoring the sweet mix of nuts and sugar. It was a hell of a lot better than the kale and granola she had been living on these past couple of months.
They began their work, Cash sifting through the printed stacks of text messages and running the numbers through the TLO and Accurint databases on her clunky CBI--issued laptop.
Colcord did the same using his iPad. There were 106 pages of texts, and they started with the recent ones, working backward.
Most of the texts were between Margie Brooksfield and her husband, talking about domestic matters and the medical problems of one of their children.
Cash learned more about Paul Brooksfield’s ongoing back rash than she had ever wanted to know.
After a couple of minutes had passed, Colcord interrupted the silence. “I think I’ve found something.” He slid over a number that he had circled in pen. The number repeated on the last seven days Margie had visited Willy Grooms before his death. The calls ranged from one hour to two hours long.
“That last call was around the same time the torture of Grooms started.”
“You don’t think she was involved, do you?” Cash asked.
“I don’t think anything—-yet. But the timing doesn’t look good.”
“So who does the number belong to?”
“A Javier Castillo, out of San Francisco. I think I found his LinkedIn page.” Colcord turned his iPad to face Cash.
A handsome man with curly black hair, a trimmed beard, and ears that stuck out a little too far smiled from his LinkedIn profile picture. Underneath was a tagline that said, “Open to work.”
Colcord slid the iPad back in front of him. “His last employment was as professor of exobiology at San Francisco State University.”
“What’s exobiology?” asked Cash.
“According to this, it’s a branch of science that explores the possibility of life on other planets and a bunch of related subjects.”
Cash’s brows drew together in concentration as she typed something else into her computer. Her eyes skimmed the results. “Looks like Castillo was recently sacked from San Francisco State University.”
“What for?”
Cash began reading from the screen, “ ‘After an investigation, Javier Castillo, tenured professor of exobiology, has been terminated with cause by San Francisco State University. According to the provost, James Dalton, accusations of professional malfeasance against Castillo were levied after an investigation into his research revealed “negligence” and “scientific fraud.” In a report made public by the university, Mr. Dalton wrote that investigators from the university looked into allegations that Castillo doctored videos of purported UAP sightings. In a statement to San Francisco Unmasked, Mr. Dalton said that as a result, San Francisco State University had retracted four scientific papers authored by Castillo and had called into question the validity of other papers of which Castillo was the principal author. Repeated attempts to reach Castillo were unsuccessful. However, in a letter to a journal that retracted one of his studies, Castillo denied the allegations, saying he had been the victim of fraud himself, of accepting as authentic videos that had been doctored by others. In a response to his termination, Castillo stated that the university had denied him due process and that he had been subjected to “a witch hunt to undermine exobiology as a multidisciplinary and respected scientific discipline.” ’ ”
“And look,” said Colcord. “He runs a blog. I’m emailing you the link.”
Cash clicked into it and started reading.
“There’s some weird shit in here,” she said.
“Listen to this: ‘The question is not whether extraterrestrial intelligent life--forms have made contact with planet Earth. We know that to be a fact. The question is: What are they doing here? What is their plan? To assume they are benign and well meaning is, in my view, a dangerous and unwarranted assumption.’ ”
Colcord chuckled. “Sounds like a nutjob.”
“Or eccentric. I mean, who knows, maybe there’s something to it.”
“Don’t start with me on this alien stuff.” Shaking his head, Colcord opened his desk drawer to fish out his cell phone.
Cash spied a flash of blue and purple ribbons. Her eyes widened. “Are those medals?”
Colcord shut the drawer with a thud. “It’s nothing.”
“That isn’t nothing. What are they for?”
Colcord shifted uncomfortably, saying nothing.
“Let me see.”
Colcord hesitated before opening the drawer and pulling out two loose medals, tossing them down on the pile of papers.
Cash immediately recognized one—-a Purple Heart. The other one, a bronze cross with an eagle and scroll, she didn’t recognize. “Holy shit, Colcord. You got a Purple Heart! You were wounded?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Colcord looked out the window, strips of sunlight from the window shade playing across his face. “A fire.”
Cash hesitated. She didn’t want to pry, but this was a side of Colcord she had no idea existed. “And the other medal? What’s that?”
“Distinguished Service Cross.” Colcord—-face unreadable—-swept up the medals and shoved them back in the drawer among a pile of rubber bands, paper clips, and other junk.
Cash wondered why she hadn’t heard about this in the news when Colcord had run for sheriff. That was the kind of thing most people running for office would trumpet.
“Don’t wanna talk about it?” she asked.
“No. Let’s get back to this guy Castillo. I think we should call him.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Hell, why not?”
Colcord dialed the number and put the phone on speaker and to record, and set it in the center of the table.
A man answered after a couple of rings. He had a light, educated voice: different from the picture Cash had painted in her head.
“Javi Castillo. How may I be of service?”
“Mr. Castillo—-this is Sheriff James Colcord of Eagle County, Colorado, and Agent Cash, Colorado Bureau of Investigation. We’re investigating a murder, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
After a pause, “Murder of whom?”
“Willy Grooms.”
“What? Willy Grooms is dead?” There was a pause, and then he began to speak in a stream of breathless, broken sentences. “Oh my God—-I can’t believe this. Who killed him? Do you have any leads? Is anyone in custody yet? How?”
“He was killed in his cabin up in the Flat Tops Wilderness. I’ll start with asking a general question: Is there anything you can tell us that might assist with the investigation?”
They could hear Castillo breathing hard on the line.
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” He spoke in a hoarse, frightened whisper. Suddenly, a click, and the line went dead.
Cash shot Colcord a glance, eyebrows raised. “That went well,” she said.
“Absolute loony. He and Grooms were birds of a feather, I bet—-two conspiracy theorists.”
“He sounded terrified. Might be worth pulling him in for questioning.”
“From California? Good luck getting the warrant.”
“One of us could fly out there to interview him. I mean, the last phone calls Grooms made were to him—-and they were long.”
“Yeah, yakking about all the UFOs they’ve seen.” Colcord rolled his pointer finger in a circular gesture near his temple.
“Still …” Cash trailed off. “It’s a valid lead.” She didn’t have to believe in UFOs to see the value in interviewing a possible witness. Colcord could sometimes be unimaginative.
Colcord drummed large fingers on the table and scowled.
“I agree we need to talk to the guy. But if you want my two cents, I bet Castillo’s a red herring.
We need to stay focused. We’ve got a whole bunch of local leads to follow up with.
The media is all over us as it is, and if they catch wind we’re talking to a UFO crackpot, they might paint us to look like idiots.
Did you see that piece in the Eagle County News?
Front page and everything. Grooms believing he could fly and talking to animals—-all sorts of nonsense.
It’s not a good look for our investigation. ”
Cash had seen it. She had expected media coverage, but it was getting a little out of hand for it being so early in the case.
Colcord was right, this could turn into a shitstorm.
Another Erebus. Every reason to follow the leads they had.
However … “We need to interview him now, Colcord. The last five phone calls Grooms made on Margie’s satellite phone were to him. ”
“All I’m saying is, we’ve got a ton of local leads to follow up on before chasing down someone in San Francisco.”
“It’s my call. I’m going.”
Colcord leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Okay then. But bring me back a tinfoil hat or two—-will ya?” He shot her a grin.
Cash, annoyed, stood up and began to clear the table of crumpled serviettes and coffee cups and shove them into the empty pastry box. She rammed the box into the garbage in the corner, grabbed her coat from the back of the chair, and left.