“Okay, so?” said Dawson.
“Any idea why the McClellans would be there?” asked Jamison. “Caroline seemed surprised that they were.”
“It’s a free country. They can go where they want.” He grinned. “And, hell, I don’t mind old Stuart putting some cash in my pocket.”
“Shane seemed quite smitten with Caroline,” pointed out Jamison.
Dawson stood. “Well, it was nice meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
The others stood, too, but Decker remained seated.
“Your daughter was making an offer to buy the apartment building where Irene Cramer lived. Did you know about that?”
“Caroline doesn’t have to come to me for every little thing. We are trying to acquire properties. And now’s a good time to do it. Stuff is still relatively cheap.”
“But you’d think prices would be going up in a boom,” said Jamison.
“It was booming last time, too. And then in a few years everything went to hell.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “What do you folks know about fracking?”
Jamison said, “Just what we read in the papers, so not much.”
“We produce more oil than any other state except Texas. But with fracking there are two downsides. First is, you get overwhelmed by the people coming in for the good-paying jobs, and drugs, prostitution, and other crime and shit like that goes through the roof. And you can’t build the homes, schools, roads, and stores and all the other stuff people want fast enough. Then there’s the second downside. You get busts. Last time oil prices went through the floor overnight and stayed there because OPEC increased production to drive the frackers out of business. Then everything around here shut down, and I mean everything. I got close to losing every nickel I had. But that’s also how McClellan really solidified his hold on the shale land around here.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jamison.
“When the fracking industry really came into vogue a while back, the big boys came up here loaded for bear. And they gobbled up all the available leases and paid top dollar for them. But with the bust cycle, they fell by the wayside and McClellan bought up their leases for pennies on the dollar. And he has his business model all squared away, so apparently no more booms and busts for him.”
Jamison said, “That still doesn’t answer my question about the prices around here now.”
“Well, despite McClellan’s operations being in good shape, people are getting damn nervous, waiting for the rug to get pulled out again. So it creates opportunities for those with a healthier appetite for risk.”
“But you almost pulled out a few years ago,” commented Kelly.
Dawson glared at him. “Maddie didn’t want to live here anymore. She’d been through hell and back with me. The last bust came, but then things started picking up again. But she’d had enough by then. She wanted out come hell or high water. We had a few dollars left. So we were going to buy a little villa in France and spend our golden years there. But then—”
“We understand she died in an accident,” said Jamison.
He nodded. “I was out of the country and she ran off the road during a blizzard. She didn’t realize that the rear of the car had run up against a berm. It had bent her tailpipe and clogged it,” said Dawson, the misery clear in his eyes. “She breathed in all that crap. And . . . died.”
“Why were you out of the country?” asked Decker.
“I was buying the place in France. Caroline was with me.”
“So she was going to live there with you?”
“She was tired of this place, too. Fresh start all around. And it’s what Maddie wanted.” He glanced at Decker. “But, again, why would any of that be relevant to your investigation?”
Decker rose. “I take the position that everything is relevant until it isn’t.”
“And you didn’t answer my question from before. I still don’t know why you Feds got called in on a local killing.”
“Well, on that one, you can join the club,” said Decker as he headed for the door.
AS THEY DROVE BACK to town, Jamison glanced at Decker and said, “You should fill Kelly in on what you found.”
Decker proceeded to tell Kelly about what he had done with Cramer’s corpse.
The local detective’s eyes kept widening the longer that Decker talked.
“Okay, I thought I had heard it all, but you just took it to another level.”
“Wasn’t on my wish list, I can tell you that.”
Kelly said, “You really think she was carrying something inside her?”
“It would explain why her intestines and belly were sliced open. I think the rest of the ‘autopsy’ done by whoever killed her was just to cover that part up.”
“It would have to be a lot of drugs to justify killing someone.”
Jamison shook her head. “But these days you don’t need mules to transport drugs. The U.S. Postal Service unwittingly does it. Or FedEx. Or UPS.”
“Which is why I don’t think it was drugs,” replied Decker, causing Jamison to gape.
“Well, thanks for sharing, Decker,” she groused.
He looked back at Kelly. “Tell me something. How well do you know Walt Southern?”
“Pretty well. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Jamison caught a look from him that said not to comment further.
“And now, let’s head out and do something we should have already done,” said Decker.
“What’s that?” asked Kelly.
“Go to the scene of the crime,” answered Jamison.
* * *
It was a breathtakingly beautiful view, made ugly only by the purpose of the visit.
Decker was staring out over the spot where Cramer’s body had been found. In the distance one could see the humps of the Badlands. The sky was the clearest it had been since they had arrived. To the north was Saskatchewan, to the west the vast footprint of Montana.
Decker was interested in neither. His sole focus was this little patch of North Dakota soil where someone had dumped Irene Cramer’s body. As he gazed around, his mind was analyzing a million different factors. Only one of them might hold any importance for the investigation, but you had to go through all of them to get there. It seemed both a likely and an unlikely place to find a dead body. Likely in that it was isolated and remote, and that was good for getting rid of unwanted dead bodies without being seen. But unlikely in that such wide-open spaces allowed no cover for anyone disposing of said dead bodies. One could literally see for miles. But at night, it would have been a different story.
“What’s near here?” he asked Kelly, who was leaning next to the SUV. Jamison was hovering to the right of Decker and staring at the spot where Cramer had been found.
“Hugh Dawson’s cattle ranch is that way.” Kelly pointed west. “About two miles. It’s a big place. He has a lot of land. But we have an abundance of that around here.”
“Dawson said they found the wolf. Where?”
“About three hundred yards from here. With Parker’s round still in it, like Hugh said. Dang thing was pretty big. If Hal had arrived much later, that critter would have torn up Cramer’s remains. We lucked out there.”