At about 11 p.m. Friday, Jeff dropped Henry Tyler off in a field near the Big Spring, Texas, airport. Jeff had wanted to drop him at an unmanned airfield in Sheffield, Texas, but Tyler insisted on “civilization,” a town with comfortable hotels and places to rent or buy cars. It was the least he deserved for his 50 thousand.
Jeff landed in the field because he didn’t want to inject his camouflage Helio Courier into the memories of the folks at the Big Spring FBO, at this hour the only lighted building at the airport. After Tyler climbed out and shouldered his bags, the nimble broad-winged aircraft turned south into the wind, bounced skyward and veered west. Tyler trudged across the runway past the cinder-block FBO building and awakened the driver of a battered red-and-white taxi parked out front. The driver dropped him at the La Quinta Inn, where Tyler rented a suite facing away from I-20. He told the sleepy clerk he’d stay two nights.
On Saturday morning, after a wonderful night’s sleep, he lolled shirtless on a poolside lounge chair, allowing the hot West Texas sun to pinken his scalp, face and torso. As relaxation seeped into his sinew and bones, it occurred to him that the last time he’d awakened with no daily duties was 34 years ago, after he’d graduated from the Palmetto Christian Academy in Mount Pleasant. For two wonderful weeks, he and his friends had surfed the Atlantic off of Fort Sullivan by day. They’d spent their nights screwing every willing girl available and guzzling cheap beer and wine procured by his friend Jim Talbot’s older brother. After two weeks, his disgusted father, John, who owned seven modest motels in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, declared an end to his bacchanal. He’d spent the remaining seven weeks before classes began at the University of South Carolina doing scut work at the family’s Silver Seagull and Wavegate motels up in Myrtle Beach – his introduction to the community where he’d later made his fortune. His principal responsibilities were scrubbing the pools, handing out and collecting beach towels, cleaning and making up rooms, and running the motels’ laundries. Every day since then, until yesterday, when he’d had to shoot his way out of Mexico, he’d had problems to solve and responsibilities to meet. Year by year, his daily agendas had grown more complex. Small wonder he’d needed anxiety meds just to function the past few years.
The sun was burning his skin, so Tyler moved into his lounge chair into the shade. He opened a beer from the cooler the day clerk had procured for him in return for a 20. As he surveyed the pleasingly sere West Texas landscape to the north and west, the azure sky deep and endless, he realized that his plan for escaping Myrtle Beach had been overwrought. Instead of relying on a weather-sensitive vessel and a publicity-sensitive plastic surgeon to morph into Forrest Terrell, he could have just kissed Angela goodbye and headed west in her GMC pickup, swapping it out in Georgia or Alabama for an old, reliable car that couldn’t be traced. He could have driven here to Big Spring or some other Western city and burrowed in, relying on facial hair to obscure the features that differentiated his appearance from Forrest Terrell’s. Instead, he’d blundered into the clutches of that psycho Harvey Rothko and ended up in jail. After escaping with Angie’s help, he could have just driven off west. Instead, he’d taken a risky detour through Mexico, destroying the carefully constructed Terrell identity, not to mention almost getting killed by narcotrafficantes. Blasting his way past them yesterday with Raoul had been fun. But it was the sort of fun that overtaxes the nerves.
He’d burned through a lot of money – though he had more than a million left and millions more in offshore bank accounts. Moreover, as Alonso Aguilar, had warned him, the Tyler identity was perilously thin. But perhaps that didn’t matter. Perhaps the authorities would stop looking for him. Not having shaved since four mornings earlier, in preparation for his abortive appointment with Dr. Calderon, he had a good start on a beard. If he kept his head shaved, chances were good that even people who knew him well wouldn’t recognize him he if came upon them on the street, or in a restaurant, or at a supermarket, or … Enough. He finished his beer, put on his shirt, picked up the cooler. Inside, he told the clerk he’d be staying until Monday and went to his room for a nap.
* * *
“I take it you managed to avoid getting arrested,” the elder Mike Buist said.
“Yes, Father, no thanks to you. Where are you?”
A cruel laugh. “Thanks to your impulsive incompetence, I’m in an undisclosed location talking to you on a satellite phone. My development deal is dead. I may have to stay here awhile. Fortunately, I speak passable Spanish. I told you that sending Tommy to torch off Klara Gunther was a mistake. … Where are you?”
“The company condo across 13th Street from the country club. I had to walk here all the way across town yesterday because Tommy wouldn’t help me escape.”
“That’s a foolish place to hide. With a simple search of tax records, a smart detective or newspaper reporter will find the condo. It’s listed in the company’s name.”
“Oh. … Where can I go? I don’t have much cash and I can’t use my bank cards.”
After a long silence, his father said, “If I help you devise an escape plan, are you prepared, personally, to complete the mission?”
“You want me to kill Rothko?”
“Yes, if you have the balls to do it. Outsourcing the job has cost us the company.”
“I don’t know how. You didn’t train me for killing.”
“Agree to do it, and I’ll tell you. Don’t worry. No actual blood on your hands.”
“Um, OK, Father.”
“Go to the small bedroom, the one I used for an office during my trips to Wichita, and unlock the big drawer on the right side of the desk. The key is in at the bottom of the spoon tray in the kitchen. You’ll find a briefcase with 300 thousand cash and two burner cell phones. Is that old Ford F-150 still in the garage?”
“Yes. I considered using it to escape but doesn’t the tag trace back to the company?”
“It doesn’t,” his father said. “It was the pickup your paranoid Uncle Tom used for surprise visits to our Kansas drilling sites. It’s registered to Francis Oil, a mom-and-pop drilling company in Great Bend that we acquired some years ago. The registration is current.”
“Why didn’t Uncle Tom just use his limo to visit drilling sites?”
“Because the F-150 looks like a vehicle a pipe rigger or swamper would drive. Your uncle had this idea that workers were stealing our crude. So he’d drive right up to the collection tanks at a given well in hope of catching thieves red-handed.”
“Did he ever catch any?”
A snort. “Of course not. The little oil thievery we experience annually takes place at tank farms. Stealing crude there is less complicated. … Not that it matters now. Lana will probably corral Tommy into running the company. Or maybe she’ll sell it.”
“Over my dead body.”
“For corporate purposes, we’re both already dead, Mikey. Now, head up to the lake house where we used to hold executive retreats. Your Uncle Tom leased it long term from his friend Morris Heindl, who prefers to live in town. You remember how to get there, right?”
“Yes. It’s northeast of here.”
“Get some provisions and hide out up there. Turn off your mobile phone so you can’t be tracked. I’ll call you on the landline there Tuesday.”
* * *
Sheriff Willard Ganz summoned Laura Severson into his office Monday morning and beckoned her into the chair before his desk. “I want you to go out to Furley and figure out whether the death of Joseph Heinzeiger yesterday was a murder. I have trouble believing that the manager of an ethanol plant, known for his strict compliance with safety standards, could fall off an absorption tower and die of massive trauma. The ME, Gwen Delk, is already out there. Work with her to figure out what happened.”
Severson said, “I’m in the middle of investigating the aggravated assault on Jason Kittredge, sheriff. I’d like to see it through.”
“I should never have agreed to put a detective on that task force,” Ganz said. “I’m understaffed. Gilchrist’s death was never a mystery. It was a combination of his incompetence and the instability of the woman who shot him. If Alma Savage hadn’t insisted, I’d have refused her request.”
“I was hoping that once I get Keenoy and Doust bound over for trial, which should happen in an hour, I could join the hunt for Mike Buist Junior.”
The affability leached out of Ganz’s face. “Never forget that you forced me to say this, detective. The DA wants you off the task force. You bungled the chain of evidence on what should have been a simple case. I’m giving you a way to salvage your career.”
“How was I to know that Kittredge kept his tech gear in the garage? Who does that? There must be a way to get that video admitted into evidence. I obtained it legally on Friday.”
“That ship has sailed, detective,” Ganz said, “The DA will have to rely on Butch Becenti’s testimony to get those thugs bound over for trial. Now, get out to Furley and find me a murderer, if there is one.”
“That bitch Debra Hobaica is behind this, isn’t she? When she brought me the video file from Kittredge’s garage, I could tell she thinks I’m incompetent.”
“Detective Hobaica had nothing to do with my decision. It’s Alma Savage who has a problem with you. However, I still think you have potential as a detective.”
Feeling a bit better, Severson said, “Thank you, sheriff. Sorry for the outburst.”
“It’s forgotten. Now, go investigate poor Mr. Heinzeiger’s death. Validate my faith in you, or I’ll put you back in uniform to patrol county roads until you’re ready to retire. Got it?”
“Yes, sheriff.”
* * *
On Monday at 10, Harlan Doust and Bart Keenoy, both shackled to wheelchairs, appeared in Judge Wilbur Phillips’ courtroom for their preliminary hearing. Both had pleaded not guilty on Friday. Over the objection of Assistant DA Kim Hartley, their court-appointed lawyers persuaded the judge to strike down the video recording of their clients’ assault on Jason Kittredge, on the ground that chain of custody had been broken. Then Hartley called Butch to the witness stand.
I’d better not screw this up, Butch thought as he swore to tell the truth.
He needn’t have worried. With deftly worded questions that proved resistant to defense objections, Hartley guided Butch through the debacle at Jason’s house, culminating in Doust’s assertion that Mike Buist Junior had ordered the assault. He managed to withstand the hostile questioning of the prisoners’ attorneys. In the end, Phillips found probable cause they’d assaulted Kittredge and bound them over for trial in an early November.
Out in the hall, Butch approached Hartley, a stout brunette who looked part Cherokee. She wore a nicely cut gray-and-white hound’s-tooth suit. “Nice job in there, Mr. Becenti,” she said. “Now we can issue an arrest warrant for Mike Buist Junior.”
“Thanks, Ms. Hartley. “Why wasn’t Detective Severson here today? She was the arresting officer.”
“The sheriff reassigned her to a possible murder at the ethanol plant in Furley.”
“And your office had no objection?”
Hartley said, “I can’t discuss that with you. We got the result we wanted, right?”
“I guess,” Butch said. “But it was my fault she missed the computer that recorded the video of the assault. I knew about it and didn’t tell her.”
Hartley shrugged. “Not my problem or yours. My goal today was to push Doust and Keenoy toward a plea bargain to nail Mike Buist Junior. With your help, I succeeded. I expect to hear from their lawyers soon.”
“OK,” Butch said. “See you in November if it doesn’t work.”
Out in his Jeep, Butch called Deb and obtained Severson’s mobile number. Severson answered on the second ring. “Hey, detective, it’s Butch Becenti. I’m glad I caught–”
“What do you want? I’m very busy.”
“I’ll be brief. I apologize for not directing you to the computers in the garage last Thursday. I put my ego ahead of your needs. I get the sense my obstruction cost you professionally. If so, that’s my fault. I hope you can forgive me.”
After a few seconds passed, Severson said, “I appreciate that, Mr. Becenti. But it was my responsibility to ask, and I didn’t. I assumed we had the correct machine.”
“Still, I’d like to make it up to you.”
“Um, OK. … Are you any good at reading crime scenes?”
Surprised, Butch said, “As it happens, I am. Need some help out there?”
“If I pay you, say, 50 dollars, would you consult with me on this case?”
“No. I’d have to have at least one dollar.”
The resultant merry laugh rejiggered his conception of her. “I can afford that.”
“I’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”
About 45 minutes later, Severson, dressed in blue coveralls, walked Butch through the scene of Heinzeiger’s death. Employees reporting for work at dawn had found his body at the base of the 40-foot absorption tower through which distilled corn alcohol was run. But according to Gwen Delk, the county medical examiner, he was dead before impact. Her best guess, pending lab tests, was that alcohol poisoning had killed him before he fell.
“The lead engineer, George Kemper, coached me to think of this tower as a giant filter,” Severson said. “Unless they take every bit of water from the distilled corn-starch alcohol, the ethanol they make wouldn’t combine successfully with gasoline. Somehow, poor Mr. Heinzeiger got exposed to alcohol fumes.”
“Any holes or fissures in the skin of the tower?” Butch asked.
“None,” she said. “I’ve been all over this sucker in the past few hours. No rust spots, cracks or pinholes that would allow alcohol to escape.”
“Was anybody with Mr. Heinzeiger at the time?”
“There was a seven-man crew here yesterday, but no one admits to seeing him.”
“He was supposed to be off for the day?”
“Right,” she said. “They don’t know why he was here.”
“Let’s go up top.”
“I’ve been up there,” Severson said, “but maybe you’ll find something I missed.” She led him to the rungs that ran up the side of the tower.
The top was bounded by a rectangular yellow gated safety rail about three feet tall. As they entered the enclosure, Butch noticed a circular manhole cover about two feet in diameter. “Can I assume this exists for visual inspection of the filtration gear?”
“You can,” she said. “As you can see from the chipped paint around the latch and hinges, it’s been opened recently. Routine inspection Friday, according to the foreman, Frank Hendricks.”
“Was alcohol distillate running through the tower yesterday?”
“So I’m told,” she said. … “I see what you’re getting at. If the manhole cover was open – or even unlatched – while alcohol was flowing through the filters, someone up here could have gotten a snootful of toxic fumes, especially if he tried to close the latch.”
“Which a conscientious plant manager would do,” Butch said. “But absent a motive, you’d have an accident attributable to carelessness, not a murder. … Does anyone know who lured him up here?”
“One way to tell would be to get a warrant for his phone records, which is on my list of things to do,” Severson said. “His mobile phone is missing, but one of the deputies helping me obtained its number from his wife, who, by the way, also reported no calls on the landline at their house. We’ll check the records for that line, too, of course. They live about two miles away. She doesn’t recall him receiving a call on his cell phone yesterday. All she knows is that he left for the plant at about 3 p.m., in the middle of the Chiefs game. She said it would have taken a lot to drag him away from the game.”
“Was she watching the game with him?”
Severson smiled. “She hates football. She was in the garden harvesting tomatoes. He told her he had to go to the plant and drove off.”
“I take it his phone wasn’t in his car?”
She pointed at a blue Chevy Suburban near the base of the tower. “No. We combed through every inch of it.”
“Well, it’s suspicious his phone is gone. It should have been on or near his body. You may find a motive if you find out whether someone called or texted him. Also, it’s strange that his wife didn’t report him missing yesterday evening.”
“That occurred to me, too. We’ll question her about that.”
“You’re obviously on top of the situation. … Can we climb down now?”
Another merry laugh, which made her prim face beautiful. “Didn’t you get used to heights in Afghanistan? I’m assuming you were there.”
“I was. I went to a lot of high places but didn’t especially enjoy it.”
Back down below, she walked him to his Jeep. As he got in, she placed a hand on his arm. “You helped me a lot, Mr. Becenti. Thank you. Here’s your dollar.”
“Keep it. All I did was help you validate what you already knew. You’ve got my mobile number, so let me know what happens. If you need more help, just call. I’m unassigned right now, so I have the time.”
An impish smile. “What if I just want to talk … can I call you Butch?”
Whoa. He grinned. “That would be most welcome, Laura.”
* * *
On Monday morning, Tyler rented a house and paid 32 hundred for a 2006 gray Impala with only 56 thousand miles on the odometer. Then he bought a no-contract phone. After a trip to the Kwikie grocery store, Tyler drove to the house, a pleasant adobe bungalow across the tree-lined street from the local college.
He loaded his provisions into the refrigerator and cupboards, cracked a beer and went out to the front porch, where the landlord had thoughtfully placed a wooden rocker. After swallowing some beer, he picked up the phone, opened a text box, entered Angie’s mobile number and keyed in his new phone number. He thought about adding words of love … but what was the point? It wasn’t as though she could catch the next plane out here. His phone number alone would let her know he’d made it out of Mexico.
Thirty seconds after he tapped the send-arrow, the phone buzzed. Angie. Thrilled that she wanted to talk to him, he accepted the call. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Are you still in Texas, Fenster?”
He said, “Yes. Thought I’d lay low here awhile. Big … The town is really nice.”
“You’ve got to get out of there right away. Yesterday, the FBI arrested Todd Fenwick, the guy you know as Jeff, when he landed in Florence, his home base. Apparently they tracked him down to far-south Texas and then to Colorado and then back here. They charged him with aiding fugitives from justice, you and a woman named Sarah Stevens who was under home detention in Colorado Springs. He brought her to Florence, but the feds nabbed her at the airport and sent her back.”
“Jesus, that’s awful. Poor guy.”
“You’re not getting it, Fenster. The asshole gave me up. Benson Calhoun has helped me to avoid arrest so far. But I’m a person of interest in your escape. You have to assume he’s given you up, too. Get out of there.” She broke off the call.
Tyler ran inside, dug his meds out of his shaving kit and popped a Xanax. Then he packed his bags and drove north, sticking to secondary roads.
He spent Monday night at the Bide-A-Wee Inn, outside Oklahoma City. The motel reminded him of the Silver Seagull – green linoleum covering the floor, coarse muslin sheets on the bed, pink and blue neon light bleeding through the translucent window shade. Every expense spared. But at least it was clean.
Xanax could not quell his fear and rage. Be he Fenster Talmadge, Forrest Terrell or the barely-there Henry M. Tyler, he would always be a fugitive. If there was no place he could settle in long term, what should he do? He’d been a fool to think the authorities would stop looking for him. He could turn himself in, return to the beach, and hope for the best in his murder trial. Forget Benson Calhoun. With the money in the satchel by the bed, he could afford the modern-day equivalent of F. Lee Bailey, whoever that was. His Colt Woodsman may have killed Bobby Boggs, but proving he’d pulled the trigger would be difficult. Acquittal was conceivable.
Thanks for reading Denney’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
But … pride would not allow him to do that. If his quest for a new life was destined to fail, let it fail spectacularly. He needed to get even with Rothko, who could not just be thankful he’d survived assassination and go on with his life. Instead, he’d made it his mission to hound the former Fenster Talmadge, to make his life unbearable.
Confucius supposedly had said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Fine. If he was to occupy one of them, Rothko would occupy the other.
Next: Chapter 25, The diagram
