“We want to interview her tomorrow, and we’d like you to be here, since you know her,” Portenson said.
“I thought I knew her,” Joe corrected. “Whatever. We want you there.” “New Orleans?”
“I’ll fax you the address for our field office, and we’ll make you a reservation at a hotel nearby. If you take the commuter flight that leaves your little podunk airport in two hours, you can connect in Denver. You can be here tonight.”
“I don’t think I have the budget to . . .”
“We’re covering your expenses, Joe. I already got approval for it.”
oe Pickett landed in New Orleans at midnight, in a rainstorm of biblical dimensions. His Stetson got soaked through in just the time it took him to climb into a taxi at the airport.
Despite the rain, there were throngs of people moving on the sidewalks downtown. Some carried umbrellas, but most just got wet. He checked in at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter.
As he stood at the front desk, dripping, the flinty blond clerk found his reservation and said, “Are you really from Wyoming?”
“Yup.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met anyone from there before.” “Now you have,” he said.
There was a message on the voice mail in his room from Portenson saying to be at the FBI field office on Leon C. Simon Boulevard by 9 a.m. “We’ll brief you on what we’ve got so far, and then we’ll go in and see her,” he said. “So don’t party too hard on the Quarter tonight.”
Joe called Marybeth to tell her that he had arrived safely, then tried to sleep. He couldn’t. The unfamiliarity of it all—Marie Logue, mutilations, New Orleans—kept him awake.
At two in the morning he put on his wet hat and went outside into the rain. The streets were still crowded with people. He walked down Dauphine Street and then Bourbon, and a reveler from a balcony above him called him “Tex” and threw him a beaded necklace.
t was still raining in the morning when he arrived at the FBI field office. The security guard found his name on the computer, gave him a guest badge, and sent him into the back offices.
Portenson was waiting with a bookish woman he introduced as Special Agent Nan Scoon. Scoon had been the leader of the team that arrested Marie at the airport.
Portenson said, “When we brought her in, she had $8,000 in cash on her and records that indicate that she transferred $1.3 million—the rest of the insurance money—to accounts in the Caymans. That’s what she had spent her time doing after she left your place.
“The calls she made to your wife supposedly to check on her daughter were from all over the country. Not one actually came from Denver, where her parents do live. We interviewed them and she never even showed up there.”
Joe whistled. “You did some good work.”
“I know,” Portenson said, “I’m a fuckin’ genius. But the great thing is that we built the case on her while we waited for her to show up here, and last night we dropped it on her like a ton of bricks. First-degree accessory to three murders, child abandonment, conspiracy, racketeering, and fifteen other counts. She was playing it straight at first—she kept insisting she was Barbara Grossman—but we dropped those charges on her like the Mother of All Bombs. And after a little crying jag, she cracked. She gave us a little at first, fishing around for a deal. When she saw she wasn’t going to get one, she started yapping. My guys down there said that by the time she was through, it was like she was bragging about it, all full of herself.”
“So she’s willing to talk?” Joe asked.
“That’s why we brought you down here, cowboy.”
Joe didn’t recognize her at first when they entered the spartan interview room. Marie was now blond, and she wore fashionable, black-framed glasses. She had added a beauty mark to her upper lip. When she saw Joe, her eyes widened behind the lenses.
“Hello, Marie,” Joe said, sitting across the table from her. Portenson and Scoon took the other chairs.
Agent Scoon signaled for the tape to roll, and briefed Marie on her rights. As she had done the day before, Marie waived the right to have an attorney present.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said curtly, looking at Joe.
“So who actually found the file in the basement?” Joe asked.
“Moi,” she said, and her eyes sparkled. “Cam might have seen it before, but it didn’t connect with him the way it connected with me. He was a little slow in that regard. Cam was a fairly weak guy, basically. He looked to me for guidance.”
Joe grunted. In retrospect, it didn’t surprise him all that much. As he had thought earlier, Cam was driving without a road map. But Marie was the one providing directions.
“Then those mutilations came,” she said, “and that’s all everyone was talking about. We liked the idea that the land values were sinking, but we worried about whether we could afford the Timberline Ranch anyway. That’s when I started pushing Cam so hard to get out there and get more listings. I rode him hard, thinking that if even one of the ranches sold we would have the down payment on the Timberline.”
While she talked, she drew invisible patterns on the tabletop with her index finger.
“That’s when poor old Stuart Tanner showed up with his file. We didn’t figure that Tanner would research the deed and find the same thing I did. So when Cam told me that we needed to forget about buying the place and move on, I played my hole card.”
“You called Eric,” Joe said.
“Right. We’d kept in touch for years.” She batted her eyes coquettishly. “He’s been smitten with me, like forever. We’d had a relationship years before that Cam never knew about. I moved on but Eric kept a torch. Even when he started getting sick he never lost his feelings for me. He said he’d do anything for me. Then he’d talk like a nut about his obsession with aliens. I let him go on and on about that. So when I called him and asked him for a favor, he came. Eric and his buddy Bob did Tanner and Montegue. Eric did it to please me, which was kind of sweet when you think about it.”
Joe felt his stomach curdle, but tried to stay calm and ask his questions. “Why did they choose Tuff Montegue?”
She shrugged. “He was just there, I suppose. But Eric was clever in a devilish kind of way. He told me that they intentionally messed up the job on Montegue. They did it to draw attention away from Tanner, and as you know, it worked. Your task force would have been working the wrong angle on that one until hell froze over, if it weren’t for you, Joe.”
Joe said nothing. He was thinking. Most of the pieces had finally fallen into place. But there were still problems.
“So Cam didn’t know about his brother being there?” Joe asked.
“I think he assumed he was somewhere close. He told me he thought it was just a matter of time before the family was back together, now that his parents were there. He dreaded the prospect.”
“Did he know Nurse Bob was living in a shack on your property?”
“I didn’t even know that. I thought he was living somewhere out in the woods.”
“What about Cam’s parents? Did Cam know they were coming? Did you?”
Marie laughed sourly. “That was as big of a surprise for me as it was for Cam when they showed up. I knew about Bob coming, of course, but I had no idea they were bringing him. Old Clancy and Helen really threw a kink into things.”
“Did you tell Eric to kill his brother?”
Marie reacted with shock. “Of course not. Of course not. I was gen-uinely shocked when you told me what happened. I just wanted Eric to put a little spine into Cam, because Cam was wavering on me.”
“Why was he wavering?”
“You spooked him,” Marie said, smiling at Joe. “That meeting you had with him shook him up. When he found out you were checking out the deeds at the county clerk’s, he told me we needed to forget the whole damned thing. But I had no intention of giving up.”