Chapter 11 #2
They settled around the patio table with coffees and the promised scones.
The weather continued to be gorgeous with an almost cloudless sky overhead, the kind that made unsuspecting visitors move to the area.
Rays of sunshine made their way through the canopy of maple trees planted around the yard and took the edge off the unusual spring heat.
Gabe wasn’t a gardener, but he could appreciate the appeal.
He took a bite of his pastry and was pleasantly surprised. “This is delicious.”
“I’ll tell Shannon you said so. She owns a boutique bakery, whatever the hell that is, in town.
It’s called Bateau Gateau.” Knute popped the last crumb of his scone into his mouth.
“Alrighty, now that we’ve had a snack, let’s get down to the reason Elton brought you here.
He mentioned the Wilson murder on the phone.
” He leaned back in his metal patio chair, one mostly gray eyebrow rising expectantly.
“Boat Cake?” Gabe wondered, but he was pretty sure he was right. Did Etienne know about this place?
Knute shrugged. “Boat Cake. I don’t want to talk about that, though. I want to hear what you have to tell me.”
Elton nodded at Gabe, encouraging him to speak.
Bringing the coffee mug to his lips, Gabe took one more sip of his coffee for strength and a few more seconds of time.
Heidi Karne raised her son to be careful around the police, even retired ones who he suspected possibly had a thing going with his friend.
Once the sip of coffee had gone down—surprisingly good for an ex-cop’s brew—Gabe proceeded to tell Knute what had happened the day before, starting with the phone call. When he was finished, he sat back in his chair, unintentionally mimicking Knute.
Knute stared into the distance. Hopefully, he was processing what Gabe had shared and not dozing off. Elton watched his friend but looked away when he realized that Gabe had noticed.
Across the yard, a flock of red house finches convened on one of many birdfeeders Knute had hanging from tree branches, all flapping their wings at each other. Elton’s bird identification book was coming in handy.
Knute tapped the tabletop with two fingers, breaking the silence.
“I think, with the demise of the Perkins brothers a few months ago and now Roy Wilson, half the force is going to be let go. There’s gonna be nothing to keep them busy.
I’m mostly kidding, but a call from Roy Wilson generated paperwork, and when there was nothing else to do, a drive-by. ”
“Wilson did? Even with his church and being a pastor these days?” Elton asked.
“Not the way you’d think, considering his history around here.
Roy and his”—Knute waved a hand, trying to come up with the word he wanted—“assistants must have had the non-emergency line on speed dial. They’ve been using the WPD as their personal security team for years.
The wind blew the wrong way, the department got a call.
Stranger lurking, car alarm, someone chewing too loudly. The man was on edge.”
Huh. Gabe had assumed there’d be complaints against Wilson, not Wilson complaining about people who crossed his path.
“I heard that Wilson has been particularly paranoid recently,” Knute told them.
“Now it seems he had good reason to be,” said Elton.
Which, Gabe thought, added another layer to the still-unanswered question of why Wilson had decided to call him, of all people.
Knute snorted and shook his shaggy head.
“This is Roy Wilson we’re talking about.
You know as well as I do that before he found God, he ran with the worst of the criminals out here, was deeply enmeshed in regional crime.
About the only thing he didn’t appear to have a hand in was human smuggling, and I’m not entirely convinced he didn’t.
Then suddenly he was the pastor of a church and talking about good deeds. Made me wanna toss my cookies.”
Gabe had to agree with Knute, especially after being the unfortunate who found his body. It was doubtful that Wilson had changed his ways; he’d only remodeled the facade he presented.
Same house, same horseshit, merely a different day, Chance.
“Did Wilson know the Perkinses and Eli Rizzi? Casey”—Gabe glanced at Elton and decided fuck it—“my partner, works for the Forest Service. He had many interactions with the Perkins brothers over the years. All unpleasant.”
Knute nodded. “I’m sure he did. Dwayne and Calvin Perkins were busy everywhere in the county, including Westfort.
There were times before I retired when it seemed like I might as well just head on over to Heartstone and see what the brothers had stashed in the back of their truck, save myself some time.
But, of course, they were protected by that fucker Rizzi, so we never were able to do much more than slap their hands.
If we did arrest them, charges were almost always reduced or dropped since that bastard lawyer worked for the county too. ”
The Bastard Lawyer. John Stevens, who happened to have been Gabe’s ex’s estranged father. Gabe kept that tidbit to himself although Knute was probably aware. Ex-cops were prolific gossips.
“What were your interactions with good ol’ Pastor Roy like before he founded the Abundance of Light Church?” Gabe asked.
This time Knute snorted. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone murder. But like I said, before God supposedly picked him out of the trash, Roy was implicated in just about every type of crime on this end of the peninsula and probably further afield, although there never was hard proof.”
“But I’d bet you still don’t want his murderer going free.”
“There is that, I guess.” Knute grunted.
Disgusted with his personal code of justice, Gabe supposed.
“We managed to get a grand larceny charge to stick once—that damn lawyer of his must’ve been on vacation—so he ended up spending sixteen months inside.
Wilson insisted that was where he found religion.
After he got out, he supposedly cleaned up his act.
But there were still whispers, nothing anyone could pin on him. ”
“What kind of rumors?” Elton asked.
“Young women. Underage, although we never had enough evidence.” It was easy to see on his face how much Knute hated the man.
“And his money. Where did Wilson’s money come from?
After his father died, it came out that there wasn’t much left of the family cash, so Roy’s seed money had to have come from somewhere else. ”
“Do you think someone decided to take justice into their own hands?” Gabe asked. “Or he owed money to the wrong person?”
Knute shrugged. “It’s always possible. Bludgeoning someone with a golf club does point toward a crime of opportunity and passion.” Knute must have noticed Gabe’s eyebrows rase at the mention of a golf club because he added, “What can I say? Cops gossip. Even to retired ones.”
Gabe suppressed his smirk; he liked Knute’s attitude.
“Remember how the Wilsons won the lottery or something back in the seventies, ended up coming into big money? That’s when they moved from Heartstone to Westfort,” Elton said. “Boy, was I happy to see the backside of them.”
Smiling faintly, Knute shifted in his seat, leaning in as if he was about to tell them a secret. “More like or something. Alan Wilson, Roy’s father, claimed he’d come into his inheritance, but I’ve always thought he had assistance in making that happen.”
“You seem to know a lot about the Wilsons,” Gabe said.
“You have no idea.” Knute tapped his forehead. “A lot I’ll never be able to prove. I was a rookie cop back then, and Alan Wilson is long dead. That man won’t pay for his crimes, but I can extrapolate.”
“Oh?” Gabe said encouragingly.
The wind kicked up just then, sending fallen leaves scuttling across the concrete patio and blowing clouds to block the sunshine. It wasn’t exactly cold, but Gabe wished he hadn’t finished his coffee.
“Picture this.” Knute held up his hands, fingers shaping an invisible square.
“It’s the early forties, and America has finally entered the war.
The economy, which had been total shit, has roared back to life.
” Knute waved his hands around, encompassing all of the Olympic Peninsula.
“Life had been miserable for years out here, but now there’s a huge demand for timber.
If the early twenties were insane, the forties were the Wild West all over again.
Demand spiked, mills were cranking twenty-four seven, money was being made hand over fist.” Knute paused and swirled his cup, then took what looked like his last sip of coffee.
“Don’t get me wrong. Philip Wilson, Alan’s brother, was not a person to set your moral compass by.
But he’d saved some money, and he turned around and invested it into the timber economy.
Almost immediately, the investment paid for itself and was making serious cash, quite literally raking it in.
Enter stage left, his scapegrace of a brother, a person who, from all accounts, had never worked an honest day in his life.
Records from back then show their relationship was acrimonious, but Philip gave Alan enough to live on.
Then, one rare weekday in 1950, Philip takes the day off, and he and his wife of two years decide to go on a little trip, drive their soft-top Mercury Eight out to the coast. They’re never seen again. ”
Gabe waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, the plot thickens.”
“How come I didn’t know about this?” Elton demanded.
Knute eyed his friend and shrugged. “Anyway, the couple’s last known location was a filling station between Lake Crescent and Port Angeles.
Searchers find no sign of them, not anywhere.
Alan tries to take over Philip’s company, but his brother was no idiot.
He’d set up the business so basically Alan had no say in the running of it or access to any of the accounts.
He did, however, still receive his monthly allowance. ”
Knute picked up his mug, stared into it, then frowned before setting it back on the table.
“Alan settles on Heartstone, marries some unfortunate girl from Aberdeen, and Roy is born. We know that Alan was involved in drugs and so forth, but he was Twana County’s problem, not the city of Westfort’s, and they had a lot of other problems to deal with.
Finally, in 1957, Philip is declared legally dead, but his fortune is bestowed upon his orphaned daughter. ”
“Foiled again. I bet Alan wasn’t happy about that,” Elton said.
“I’m sure he was not,” Knute said, tossing a wink Elton’s direction. “In 1972, tragedy struck the Wilsons yet again. The daughter, Carolyne, was killed when her brakes failed and she was sent careening over the side of the road into the Pacific. Coroner said she died almost instantly.”
“It’s my turn to guess. Alan finally inherited,” Gabe said.
Knute jabbed his index finger at Gabe. “Boom.”
“That’s a long game to play for money,” said Elton.
“Persistence pays off,” Knute said with a grim chuckle. “Divers found Philip’s car in Lake Crescent in 2002, I think. Impossible to tell what went wrong after all this time, but I wouldn’t put it past Alan to have tampered with it.”
Gabe said, “We can assume the brakes failed, just like Carolyne’s. So, Alan Wilson finally gets the money he wanted for all those years and moves his family to Westfort. What next?”
“The Wilsons became Westfort’s problem again and are now better at hiding their criminal tracks.
Money talks and all that. And, obviously, nothing could be proved.
Much of what I’ve told you is just me and other old farts tacking some known facts and supposition together.
Philip and his wife could’ve accidentally slid off the road into Lake Crescent after hitting ice, or maybe an elk jumped out in front of them.
Carolyne Wilson’s brakes could have honestly failed.
Mostly, all this background is so you understand the Wilsons’ history around here.
Roy Wilson grew up hearing that his daddy was owed and that turned into Roy was owed.
What he feels he’s owed, he takes. Took,” Knute amended.
“And the church?” Gabe asked. “What was up with that?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“What you’re saying is, it literally could be anyone, for almost any reason, who is responsible for Roy Wilson’s murder. And you mentioned he was paranoid later in life.” Gabe decided to change the subject slightly. “Was Wilson a golfer?” he asked Knute.
“I don’t know but I can find out easily enough. Why?”
“I’m curious about the clubs in the office.” The thought he’d been chasing around since yesterday finally bobbed to the surface. “If it was Wilson who called me, why would Emmett Spurring give him my number? What is their connection?”
“The deputy who took your statement didn’t check the number?” Knute asked.
“To be fair, she probably wanted to get rid of me as fast as she could. I’m sure it slipped her mind.” Gabe didn’t want Knute to think Choi hadn’t done her job.
“Personally, I don’t know of a connection,” Knute said.
Elton shook his head. “Me neither.”
Gabe fumbled around and patted himself down in a hunt for his phone, finding it in his back pocket where he’d stuffed it after getting out of the truck. He jabbed at the screen, scrolled to recent calls, then tapped the unknown number from yesterday morning.
“Here goes nothing,” he said.