Hand in hand, we walked to where my truck was parked.
“Your family loves you so much,” he told me. “And the kids, Shaw, the way the little ones climb all over you and the big ones linger, wanting to talk to you, it just makes me want to take you home and do things to you.”
“Oh, yeah?” That sounded promising. “Seeing me with my family makes you like me even more? Is that what I’m hearing?”
He chuckled and let go of my hand, leaning into me as we walked, and I anchored him to me with an arm around him.
“Well?” I prodded him. “Is your plan to get back in my bed as soon as we get home?”
“Yes,” he whispered, and when I looked, his eyes were shining in the moonlight. “It’s all I want to do, just lie in your arms all night.”
It sounded like a fine plan to me.
On the way home, just after nine, we got a call from Chief Brasher. I put it on speaker so Benji could hear too and told Brasher he had us both.
“Maybe next time tell me before you leave town,” he told us.
“Rune isn’t safe for him at the moment,” I replied flatly. “And we don’t actually have to be there. Our part of the investigation is over.”
“I agree,” he said, exhaling deeply.
“You found him,” I stated, and Benji grabbed my hand. “Didn’t you?”
A simple grunt came from the other end. “People think they’re smart, weighting a body down and putting it underwater.”
“Oh, in that small abandoned quarry on Ruben—I mean Chuck’s—land.” Benji surmised.
“That’s right,” Brasher replied, sounding about a hundred years old. “As soon as the state police got a map of the property this morning, they went right to it.”
“How was he killed?” I asked.
“Looks like with that same rifle that we traced back to Ranger Alameda today. The same one that destroyed your spirit box, Benji.”
“No,” he gasped. “Stewart tried to kill me?”
“He claims he only tried to scare you into leaving, and I suspect that’s true. He’s very good with that rifle if being a marksman in the Army is any indication. I think hitting the box in your hands was a helluva shot.”
“Okay, so Alameda killed Sears?”
“Yeah.”
“To protect what? What were they moving?”
“Oh, pot. So much pot.”
“But that’s legal in Oregon,” Benji reminded Chief Brasher.
“Not at the amount they were producing and moving.”
“How does Chuck Lindstrom fit into all this?” I interrupted because I wanted to know the whole story. “And what’d Pete Belmont do if he wasn’t the one who killed Sears?”
“It’s so much less interesting than you’re thinking,” Brasher assured me.
“Tell me anyway,” I prodded him.
It turned out that Chuck Lindstrom, Stewart Alameda, and Pete Belmont had been high school friends. And while Chuck and Stewart had left and come back, Pete had remained, married Suzie, and along with owning and running his own bar, had a small but lucrative marijuana business going long before it was legal.
When Chuck and Stewart returned to Rune, Chuck, with his land, and Stewart being the only law enforcement in the wilderness where the pot fields were, Pete thought that it was time to bring in partners. The land where the fields were was actually public land that butted up against Chuck’s acreage, but being as they doubled the field size, it became best to buy Ruben’s parcel and create a bigger buffer between the marijuana plants and people just out for a hike.
From what Brasher described, Heath Sears had hit up Ranger Alameda for help with the investigation the moment he hit town. There was no figuring out if Sears was DEA or him blowing his cover by sleeping with Suzie. It was simply that they knew he was a federal agent and needed to find the best time to kill him.
Interestingly, Pete did not give a crap that his wife was sleeping with a DEA agent. He only wanted to keep his money out of Suzie’s hands, and he appreciated her distracting the agent until they could make a plan to get rid of him. Their affair had been great for Pete.
“So Pete knew the whole time that his wife was cheating on him?”
“Yep,” Brasher confirmed. “All he cared about was his money in a secret Cayman Islands account, safe from having to share with her.”
“Did the DEA freeze his accounts?”
“Nope. The money was transferred out long before they could move on the information.”
“So Pete Belmont has a lot of money sitting somewhere.”
“Fat lot of good it’s gonna do him as he’s rotting away in prison.”
“So they’re all going to jail.”
“Oh, yeah.” Brasher yawned, not bored recounting the story, simply, I was certain, exhausted. He’d hit the ground running with his new post. “Murder of a federal agent, accessory to murder, drug manufacturing and distribution… none of those guys will be breathing free air for the rest of their lives. If the governor hadn’t imposed a moratorium on executions, Alameda would surely get the needle, but it’ll be life for all of them.”