WHEN I CALLED ANGELA PRICE TO RELAY MEFFERT’S update, she agreed that the Satterfield task force needed to discuss it. An hour later, I dialed a special phone number, to join a conference call that Price’s assistant had set up. Rattled as I was, I kept misdialing the second set of numbers, the sequence needed to connect me with Price’s group, rather than some other group of, say, investment bankers or Las Vegas bookies or whoever else was huddled around phones at this particular moment.
After my third botched attempt to make the connection—and my third string of profanities—Peggy came through the doorway from the outer office. “Let me help,” she said. She came behind the desk and stood beside me, leaning forward to read the numbers I had scrawled on a notepad. She put the phone on speaker to free up her hands. Her left hand deftly dialed the numbers; her right hand came to rest on my shoulder, a calming weight that seemed to add some ballast and balance to my unsteady keel. Reaching up with my right hand, I laid it on hers and gave a grateful squeeze. Funny thing: I still didn’t know how to talk to her, except as my secretary, but somehow her hand and my hand were better at bridging the awkward gap.
A computerized voice in my phone announced, “You have joined the conference. There are five other people in the conference.” Peggy slid her hand off my shoulder, tiptoed from the room, and closed the door. “Hello, it’s Bill Brockton,” I said. “Am I the last one to the party?”
“I think so,” said Price. “A couple of folks couldn’t make it, but I think we’ve got most of the key players. From the TBI, we’ve got Special Agents Meffert and Morgan. From ATF, Special Agent Kidder. From KPD, Captain Decker. And our retired behavioral consultant, Pete Brubaker.”
“Can’t think of anybody I’d rather have on the case,” I said. “Where do we start?”
“Agent Meffert,” she said, “would you start us off? Tell us what you learned at the prison.”
“Sure,” he said and led the group through the connections between Satterfield, Stubbs, and Shiflett.
“Sounds like a real shitstorm’s brewing,” said someone. “This is Kidder, by the way.”
“Say some more, Agent Kidder,” said Price.
“Three guys, all of them racist Rambo wannabes. Two are in prison, one’s holed up in a fortified hollow in the mountains. One of the jailbirds is released, and two weeks later, the other one busts out. And a few days after that, the mountain man’s murdered, and his shed full of weapons and bomb-making ingredients gets cleaned out.”
I heard a ruminative grunt. “Meffert here. Let me see if I follow you, Agent Kidder. You thinking Satterfield busted out of prison to team up with Stubbs? Start some kind of race war?”
“Could be,” Kidder said. “But these Far Right nuts are always talking big about race war. Never quite happens, but they keep hoping. They could be starting a new militia group. Lotta those folks are pissed off by the way that latest Bundy thing turned out—the takeover of that wildlife refuge out in Oregon. I don’t know what these guys are up to, but I do think the timing is important. Satterfield never made an escape attempt in more than twenty years—is that right, Agent Meffert?”
“That’s right,” said Bubba.
“But then, two weeks after his buddy gets out, bam! Satterfield busts a move.”
“Could be. Oh, sorry—Steve Morgan, TBI. But then what about Shiflett? You think Satterfield and Stubbs turned on him? Why would they kill their buddy?”
“Decker, KPD SWAT team. Maybe they wanted some of his stash, and he didn’t want to share. Maybe they wanted to blow up a black church, and he got cold feet. Wouldn’t be the first time bad guys turned on one another.”
“This is Dr. Brockton,” I chimed in. “Shiflett had his driveway monitored, and he’d booby-trapped the gate, with a shotgun rigged to a trip wire. And he died of a broken neck.”
“Go on, Dr. Brockton,” Price nudged. “Connect those dots.”
“Shiflett was killed by somebody standing right behind him. Somebody he knew and trusted. Somebody he let in. The killer was strong, and he’d been trained to kill. Could’ve been either Satterfield or Stubbs. Or both.”
“No, it couldn’t. This is Brubaker, by the way.”
“Couldn’t what, Pete?” asked Price. “Couldn’t be both? Couldn’t be either—as in somebody else altogether?”
“I’m saying it was Satterfield. Only Satterfield.”
“Why?” Price persisted.
“Because Shiflett stole Satterfield’s prize possession.”
“This is one very confused Meffert here. Stole what?”
“You told us yourself, Agent Meffert,” said Brubaker. “Satterfield comes up with the perfect way to get revenge on Dr. Brockton. Chain him to a tree, torture him, feed him to a bear. But then Satterfield makes a mistake. He brags about his bright idea to his buddies, and then one of the buddies—Shiflett, the dumb shit—has the nerve to use the idea himself. Squanders the brilliant, magnificent plan on some pissant little foreign kid. Steals the precious gem that Satterfield spent twenty long years honing and polishing. To someone like Satterfield, that’s unforgivable. A killing offense.”
“Meffert here. Brubaker, you’d’ve made one hell of a preacher,” Bubba said.