Chapter 12
An hour after he left Deidra Jones’s small two bedroom apartment on Anne St in Ventura, Cyrus arrived at the outskirts of Santa Barbara. His interview with Deidra Jones was a waste of time. She appeared to be the saintly woman Kelsey and Dana had described to him. She cried off and on during the entire interview. Most importantly she had an almost airtight alibi. She admitted to being with Mike the morning he died. That was probably her hair he found in the Cooper. She said he drove her to Rincon Beach early, before seven, so she could pay a visit to a special effects person. He owed her money for some artwork she’d done for him. According to her statement, she didn’t even know Mike was dead until that afternoon.
Cyrus called the special effects guy, who verified that she had showed up early that morning. He hadn’t been with her the whole time though, he told Cyrus he had other things to do besides babysit Deidra. He got her started on her task and then went back to his work. He sounded defensive. Like he wanted to cooperate but not get too involved. Probably didn’t want his wife finding out about him working with the lovely Deidra Jones.
Even so, the man knew for certain that she had been there the whole time, since the estate was in a gated community with tight security. You needed a code to get in and out. The code changed every day, so even if Deidra knew the code from a previous visit, she couldn’t know what it was for that day. It doesn’t matter anyway; Cyrus said to himself, she didn’t have a motive. Mike gave her her old job back and even made her a staff editor. She didn’t know about him using her to get back at Dana. Still, he thought to himself, she is tall and blonde.
Rush hour was just starting and before he could make it to the Figueroa St. exit, he got buried in three lanes of gridlock. After starting and stopping every five minutes for more than two hours, he finally got off on State Street and headed for Anderson’s bakery. The stress of driving had stimulated his appetite so he decided to unwind a little with a Danish pastry and a cup of vanilla bean coffee. As late as he was, one more hour wasn’t going to hurt.
Once he got back to work, he found a missing person’s report filed by Kelsey’s father on his desktop. He read it over and then tucked it into his jacket’s inner pocket. Max sat across the aisle pecking away with two fingers at the keyboard on his computer. The grape colored hickey that covered a large portion of his right cheek and extended halfway down his neck had turned from a dark purple to a mixed brown and fuchsia color. The gory sight made Cyrus queasy.
“Kelsey Tanner was telling the truth,” Max said.
Cyrus turned in his direction to see him peering over the top of his PC monitor.
“She swiped her badge into ICU at 9pm and left next day at 9am,” Max continued, “She couldn’t have killed her brother.”
“How about her story concerning the will? What did her lawyer say?”
“She told me Kelsey was telling the truth about her requesting to be disavowed from her father’s will.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, I asked her how Kelsey’s father reacted to her voluntary disinheritance and she said he got violent. He threw an ashtray through her window. Missed the top of her head by an inch, she told me. Then she said Tanner stormed out of her office without saying a word.”
“Sounds like a violent man used to always getting his own way. What about the heart murmur?”
“I didn’t bother trying to get a look at her records; it would take too long to get a court order. But I asked her supervisor if she had missed a lot time being sick. She said she came to work every day and as far as she knew she was as healthy as a horse.”
“What about Auto MD?”
“The mechanic said he remembered Mike and the bat.”
“Good memory- you sure he wasn’t just telling you what you wanted hear.”
“No, turns out the mechanic is a die-hard Dodger fan and wanted Mike to let him have the bat for his kid.”
Cyrus raised his hand, “Don’t tell me he gave it to him.”
“No, Mike told him his sister used it for protection and put it in his Cooper.”
“Sounds like Kelsey may be right about her father. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of Mike inheriting everything and controlling TANOCO. Maybe he decided to disinherit him the easy way.”
“Oh, I got Tanner’s lawyer to tell me a little something about the will,” Max said while he took out his note pad and flipped through a few pages. “Mike didn’t automatically inherit everything just because Kelsey dropped out,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Tanner’s will stipulates that Mike has to be married before he inherits,” Mike read the notes as he spoke, “If he doesn’t, he only gets ten percent of the TANOCO’s cash holdings transferred to a trust fund and then the company is to be converted from privately owned to publically traded. Mike would also get one million dollars worth of preferred stock. Also held in a trust account. Mike being dead wouldn’t matter to Kelsey. She still wouldn’t inherit.”
“So she was telling the truth about the will too.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
“I have to check, especially when a suspect or a witness is a redheaded beauty like Kelsey.”
“What about Briana Carswell?” Max said.
Cyrus’s face turned red. Reaching into his top desk drawer, he pulled out a DVD and said, “I screwed up. I saw Dana hop up the stairway. His left leg hardly bent at all. I guess I am a prejudiced old fart.”
“Don’t blame yourself. You didn’t know about the bat and Dana didn’t help matters by lying.”
“He was trying to protect Kelsey. He really is a superhero, almost to a fault. Take a look at this DVD.” Cyrus slid the disk across the top of his desk. Max walked over, picked it up, and then walked back to his computer. He brought up the image of the female Black Bloc protestor waving her fist in the air and shouting.
“Does she look familiar to you?”
Max studied the screen for a few moments. “Briana, maybe, it’s hard to tell for sure.”
Cyrus picked up his water and took a big swallow. He set it down hard on the desk and said, “She never told us about her past activities.”
“And I never asked her. I should have been more careful vetting her.”
“Maybe she does have a motive for lying about what happened.”
Max shook his head. “Just because she was crazy when she was young doesn’t mean she is lying now. She just made a mistake.”
“She belonged to Black Bloc, an extremist anarchist group, just like Jeff Moon.” Cyrus said.
“Who’s Jeff Moon?”
“The eco-terrorist the FBI is searching for. Mike Tanner ran a feature about him in his paper. Actually Dana finally admitted to me he was at Rincon Beach the day Mike Tanner was killed. It was early, around 7 am.
“So Briana wasn’t lying about seeing him there.”
“She could have just been mistaken about the running part. But we know Dana didn’t have the bat. So it couldn’t have been him. Probably someone Jack Tanner hired that looked like Dana.”
“You think he killed his own son?”
“Maybe, he was the only one besides Kelsey and her brother who had access to Kelsey’s car and access to the blue bat.”
“That we know of.” Max stood up from his chair and walked around to the front and sat down on his desktop. “And besides, he has an alibi. He was playing golf with three people at the time of the murder.”
“So he didn’t do it himself. Probably hired someone. Briana gets to the beach around half past six. Mike and Dana show up around seven. She sees them struggle. The fight ends with no one being harmed and both of them leave. So she goes for a swim thinking everything is O.K. She gets back from her swim and naps for about twenty minutes. So now it’s about eight am. When she wakes up she sees a tall, blonde-haired man with a long scar on his back standing over Mike Tanner’s body covered in a wet suit. The man runs to the large piece of driftwood and hides the bat and then he runs up the stairs on the north end of the beach.”
“Dana corroborated the first part of her story. He admitted to being there and struggling with Mike.”
“So, in between the first episode and the second, while Briana is swimming and napping, that’s when our Dana imposter kills Mike, dresses him up in a wetsuit, and then takes him back to the beach to make it look like a drowning accident.”
“He probably hung around until Briana woke up and made sure she saw him.”
“Jack Tanner hired someone to do the job who looks like Dana.”
“What about motive?”
“Kills one bird and puts the other bird in jail, to paraphrase an old proverb. Mike wrote a lot of negative articles in The Messenger about TANOCO and his father.”
“Mike’s been writing those columns about his Dad’s company for the last five or so years. Why kill him now?”
“Maybe until now, they didn’t matter. Mike was getting in deep with the eco-terrorist movement.”
“You mean his association with Jeff Moon?”
“Something else,” Cyrus said, “Tanner’s company was the target of a hostile takeover.”
“But if Jack Tanner had his own son killed and framed Dana, why’d he bother to try to kill him by sabotaging our patrol car?”
“It’s a good way to tie up all the loose ends. Dana’s arrested for the murder and then conveniently dies on the way to the police station before anyone can ask him a lot of questions.”
“You got it, Cyrus.”
“Got what?”
“The connection we needed between the car sabotage and Mike Tanner’ murder.”
“We need to get out of here and go find some more answers.”
“Who’s first, Briana or Jack Tanner?”
“Tanner filed a missing person’s report with our office. Let’s follow up on it and see where it takes us.”
They got up and walked down the hall over to Bailey’s desk. Cyrus asked for keys to an available unmarked squad car. She grinned at him and sat there for a moment, and then a blank expression replaced her grin. She acted as if she hadn’t heard him.
“What’s wrong Bailey, are you deaf? I’d like to have the keys to a squad car.”
“I bet you would, but Captain Rudy says not to give you any squad car, he told me to direct you to his office whenever you decided you had to go somewhere.”
“O.K. fine, I’ll use my own car.”
“Wait a minute, you old grump!” She blurted out. “Go and see Rudy, you won’t regret it, I promise you.
Followed by Max, he walked over to Rudy’s office, knocked on his door. After a moment of silence he opened it a few inches and stuck his head into the office.
“Cyrus, come on in,” Rudy said, he sat facing the window behind his desk, “How’s the investigation going, got any leads?”
Rudy’s unusually pleasant tone of voice perplexed Cyrus.
“We were on our way to visit Jack Tanner in Half Moon, Rudy. I have a couple of men tracking down the owner of the black pick up that side swiped us on the freeway just before the wreck.”
Holding a newspaper in his right hand, Rudy turned around in his chair to face Max and Cyrus who were standing in front of his desk. The smile on Rudy’s face was radiant.
“I guess congratulations are in order for Senior Detective Sergeant Cyrus Fleming!” Rudy said handing Cyrus the copy of the Santa Barbara Independent he was holding. The headline read Cop Saves Murder Suspect.
“I think he’s exaggerating my role in rescuing Max,” Cyrus said as he handed the newspaper back to Rudy.
“Don’t get humble on me now,” Rudy said. Cyrus noted Rudy’s tone of voice returned to its normal sarcasm and irritation. “The force needs some good publicity. The Mayor is talking about a medal.”
Max covered his mouth to suppress a laugh and Rudy cut him a stern look.
“It’s about a six hour drive to Half Moon Bay from here,” Cyrus said, “Can we get a squad car now?”
“Sure. But what are you doing going all the way up there?”
“We have to talk to Jack Tanner.”
“You don’t have jurisdiction, at least not primary,” Rudy sat back in his chair and waved the paper like a fan.
“That’s fine we’re not going to arrest him, just ask some questions.”
Rudy put the paper down and scooted up to his desk, “I saw Jack Tanner with one of his many lawyers this morning. Very cross individual. I guess he has a right to be after all he’s been through. Poor man, did you know his daughter has gone missing?”
“Yes, I saw Kelsey last night. Well I mean she came to see me. Anyway we need ask him some questions and tell him his daughter is all right. He might give us a lead on who torched our cruiser.”
“Tanner’s a busy man. You might run into some county detectives while you’re up there. Remember that oil rig incident on Platform Irene?”
“Three roustabouts got slammed into the platform’s helipad. That’s why County had us take the Mathers case.”
“Platform Irene belongs to TANOCO.”
“How’d they rule, homicide or an accident?”
“The FAA seems to think the crash was an accident. County hasn’t made up its mind according to the paper.”
“What’s holding them back?” Cyrus asked.
“They don’t have any physical evidence, but it looks like Jack Tanner had a strong motive for trying to kill the pilot of the helicopter, Maverick Duncan.”
“What motive?”
“According to the paper, Duncan was trying to organize a union. He claims Tanner sabotaged his chopper. The union is putting a lot political pressure on the DA to bring charges.”
“Kind of a small company for a union to worry about. They only have five rigs and probably five hundred employees at the most. It’s hard to believe the Steel Union would waste time on organizing a union there.”
“Duncan didn’t work for the Steel Union. He was sponsored by the Santa Barbara Wobblies.”
“Wobblies, they’re not a real union.”
“What do you mean?”
“There a bunch a sissies is what I mean. They don’t have any normal trade unions. They’re just a group of communists who go after companies like Starbucks over petty stuff.”
“As I recall, Starbucks bent over backward to make those guys go away.”
“Yes, but they didn’t murder anyone over it, either.”
“Why do you think Tanner can give you a lead on the sabotage of your police cruiser?”
“He might have been trying to kill Dana Mathers.”
“For killing his son?”
“No, to shut him up.”
“About what?”
“About Jack Tanner having access to the murder weapon a week before his son was killed.”
“You think Jack killed his own son? What about the eyewitness?”
“She said she saw Dana running. Dana can’t bend his left leg more than an inch or two.”
“Wait a minute, Jack Tanner is a short, redhead. How’s that work?”
“Tanner is a very rich man. He hired someone who looked like Dana to kill Mike and then framed him. Then he tried to kill him to tie up the loose ends.”
“What are trying to do, ruin the DA’s conviction against Mathers?” Rudy slammed the newspaper he was holding on the desktop in front of him.
“You asked me before if I thought Mathers was innocent. At the time I really didn’t know. But now I do. Someone else killed Mike Tanner.”
“Jack Tanner?”
“We’re not sure yet, Rudy, that’s why we have to go ask him some questions.”
“Are you trying to get us all fired? How’s this going to look to the DA? Have you thought about that? We keep sending them cases and then we screw it up for them.”
Cyrus could feel the blood pumping through his temples. He put his hands on the Rudy’s desktop and leaned toward him, “I could care less right now about anybody’s career, even my own-especially my own. All I care about is that Dana Mathers is innocent and there’s a killer out there with a mission and I don’t think he’s finished. So if we don’t find him, more people are going to get killed.”
“The Mathers case is officially closed.” Rudy sat back in his chair and put his hands behind the back of his head.
Cyrus stood up, folded his arms, and said, “I’m not working the Mathers case.”
“What do you mean?”
“We still have to find out who killed that truck driver and nearly killed us, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“We’re pretty sure it’s the same person. When we catch him, the DA will still get their pound of flesh and Dana goes free.”
Rudy leaned back in his chair and sighed. The he said, “I’ll let the police in Half Moon know you’re going to be up there asking him questions.” Rudy frowned and then narrowed his eyes. “Don’t arrest anyone or shoot anyone without contacting the Half Moon police first, understand?”
“All right. But how are we going to get there? Our cruiser’s been totaled.”
“I managed to get you a replacement for your old Monte Carlo,” Rudy picked up a set keys off the desk top and tossed them to Cyrus, “I think you’ll get a kick out of it. And Cyrus, try to keep this one on the road.”
“Thanks Rudy.”
“Don’t mention it.”
In their new Dodge Charger, Cyrus and Max made the six hour trip up to Tanner’s mansion in a little less than five. Tanner’s mansion was just outside of Big Sur, on the outskirts of the town of Half Moon Bay. Twelve stories high, it reminded Cyrus of a factory building. Sitting to the west of Highway 1, a vast field of red and gold tinged ice plant surrounded the base of the skyscraper for several hundred yards. Beyond, Cyrus could see the black edges of sea cliffs and the misty, grey, hue of the Pacific Ocean.
They made the next exit off the freeway, turned south and then took the next right down the mansion’s long dirt road of a driveway. At its end, the setting sun appeared as a pulsing red mist, hanging just above the horizon.
Cyrus had always wanted to meet Jack Tanner, the wealthiest oil man in California. He had read a lot about him in The Messenger. Most of it was unsubstantiated character assassination written largely by his own son.
The oil baron possessed an oil company which consisted of five of the twenty six offshore oil rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara. He wasn’t that big of an oil producer, but his company bested everyone in the oil business for their expertise in advanced drilling techniques.
According to Jack Tanner’s great grandfather’s published memoirs, he dropped the O’ to keep from being identified with the Irish railway workers. One day he planned to dominate the high society of wealthy Protestants who feared and rejected men of Irish Catholic descent. Having finished work on the great railway that connected the east and west coasts of America, Jack Tanner’s great grandfather sought land and cattle, while his brothers took their earnings and headed back east to become policemen and politicians. It was Jack’s grandfather and then his father who turned from ranching to oil. Land, oil, and hard work had made all the Tanners strong and resourceful. They were a tight clan and to each generation of Tanner was passed the duty to expand and grow and do more than the generation before them.
On Jack Tanner lay the toughest challenge. Instead of having to fight prejudice, low oil prices, bandits, disease, and the onslaught of natural disasters, he had to deal with environmental extremism, excessive Government regulation, and unreasonable union demands. But the hardest thing Jack Tanner had had to overcome in recent years was the rebellion, and now the untimely death, of his own son Mike.
Tanner opened the door carrying a long, double barreled, over and under shotgun with the muzzle pointed down. He reeked with the smell of whiskey and his eyes looked like red, cracked, egg shells. He had a large tumbler in his other hand, filled halfway with what looked like bourbon or scotch. His pale grey complexion, his broken, cragged lined face, and his distant, ghoul-like gaze, told Cyrus that he was a man exhausted from constant and unrelenting heartache. If he has murdered his own son to save his company, he’s paying the price for it now, Cyrus said to himself.
Tanner walked out on his immense porch and closed the door behind him. He swayed unsteadily as he nodded toward the squad car. He scowled at Cyrus and Max, then he said in a loud voice, “Santa Barbara cops ride in style; you set the taxpayer back at least sixty-grand for that ride, probably more with all the extra police gear they put on it!”
“Yes sir, it is a nice squad car.” Cyrus replied politely, he tried to continue but Tanner interrupted,
“I guess wrecking a squad car you don’t like is one way to get a new one, kind of risky though.”
“Sir?”
“The squad car you wrecked yesterday, remember? It was on all the channels, too bad you had to do your duty and save that surf bum Dana Mathers.”
“We’d just like to have a few words.” Cyrus said.
“I already talked to a cop before. The jerk accused me of killing my own employees. What an idiot! If you’re here to do the same thing you can just turn around right now and go back Santa Barbara.”
“No sir, we wanted to let you know personally that your daughter has been found and she is safe.”
“God, I had given up on her ever being found,” he said, “Thank you, officer. I hope you’ll forgive me for being rude. It’s the booze. Where is she?”
“She’s probably on her way to her apartment by now. She told me she’d call you as soon as she had rested.”
Tanner raised up the shotgun and slung it across his shoulders. With a weary look, he stared at Cyrus for a moment and then he said, “Thanks, Detective, now if you’ll excuse me…”
“There is one other thing, Mr. Tanner.”
“What?”
“We’d like to talk to you about your visit with Dana Mathers.”
“My conversations are confidential, officer.”
“Not if they involve a possibility of obstruction of justice.” Cyrus bit his tongue, regretting his remark as soon as he had spoken the words. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to pressure him. It was too late now.
“What are you talking about? I think you need to leave now.”
“Have it your way, Mr. Tanner,” Cyrus said as he turned to leave. “We’ll be back with an arrest warrant.”
“You don’t scare me. First thing, you’re out of your jurisdiction. And secondly, I’ll be back home five minutes after make your charge.”
Cyrus shrugged his shoulders, “I know Mr. Tanner. You’re a powerful man. I just thought you might want to spare your daughter-”
“What’s my daughter go to do with this?”
“She’s the one who told us about your conversation with Dana. She also said you kidnapped her. We just wanted to check with you and see if we could clear things up with you without formal charges.”
Everyone was silent for a while as Tanner studied the porch. He raised his head and said quietly, “All right, come in.”
The size of the Tanner’s mansion overwhelmed Cyrus. He could have placed his townhouse in the middle of the foyer and still had room to walk around its exterior. The cherry oak wall panels stretched upwards at least forty feet to a white, domed ceiling. A large chandelier hung from its center. The polished, hardwood floor inlay crackled like twigs in a bonfire as he walked to the center of the room and looked around. The bang of the door closing reverberated through the foyer as if it were echoing through a mountain valley. Straight ahead through a large open doorway Cyrus viewed the living room, filled with three clusters of long, white, leather couches, oversized reclining chairs, and several polished, cherry-red oak tables. There was a hallway to his right and his left. Next to the entrance of the hallway on the right was a large, plantation-style stairway. He estimated the stairs to be at least a hundred feet wide. The foyer walls were lined with tall, human sized, gold framed, portraits. One of the paintings contained the image of a smiling Mike Tanner.
Jack Tanner stumbled by him as he put his shotgun up with the others on the gun rack beside the doorway. He staggered over to where Cyrus was standing looking at Mike’s portrait and stood alongside him. Tears poured from his eyes and down his face as he swallowed down a long draught from his tumbler of whiskey.
The painting of a dark haired woman riding a large black stallion hung only a few feet away. Cyrus turned his attention towards it and said, “Is this-?”
“Yes, that’s my wife, second wife, Mike’s mother,” Tanner replied.
Cyrus examined the portrait a while longer noting how the rider had the same round, bright, wide-set, coal-black eyes, narrow jaws and small, pointed, chin as her son. Her black, loosely curled hair, just like Mike Tanner’s only much longer, trailed well below her shoulders. She sat on the stallion and appeared headed down a wide, dirt road lined with tall redwoods. She sat side saddle, and wore a long, white dress; her tan face was emotionless and regal; her long graceful arms and petite hands held the reins of the horse effortlessly.
Jack leaned closer to him and opened his mouth as if he were about to speak. Instead he lost his balance. Before he fell to the floor, he caught himself on Cyrus’s chest. Their faces were so close that Tanner’s breath gagged him. Tanner blinked his eyes, righted himself and looking at Cyrus he declared in a loud voice, “Her name was Gabriela De La Montoya y Guzman, and she was not a Mexican. Mexican is a nationality, not a race. She was more of an American then you or me. Neither she, nor her father, nor her father’s father had ever been to Mexico. Her great great grandfather was from Spain.”
He raised his hand and pointing his finger at the picture continued, “In 1847 her great-grandfather fought in the Siege of Los Angeles with the Californios. They lost eventually, but only because they were surrounded and cut off from their supplies. They had fought Gillespie’s Marines and chased them back to their ship. Unlike most of his compadres, he managed to hang on to his property rights after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The old man took a hundred and forty acres in what is still one of the largest orange orchards in Ventura-”
Three piercing, ringing, blasts from down the hallway to their left interrupted Tanner’s surprisingly coherent speech. Cyrus and Max both turned toward the source of the jarring sound, crouched low, and drew their weapon. Tanner zigzagged in front of Max and Cyrus, blocking the hallway entrance. He set down his tumbler of whiskey on the floor gently, as though it were a baby. With a look of terror on his face, he waved both his arms up over his head; he began shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! For God’s sake man put your guns away; it is just a couple of friends of mine.”
“Friends? Your friends usually make that much noise?” Max asked as he stood up and holstered his three fifty seven.
“Skeet range at the end of the hall- I forgot they were waiting for me. They must have gotten bored.” he said and then picking up his tumbler of whiskey he commanded, “Let’s go into my den, I need some ice for this drink.”
Cyrus and Max followed Tanner as he marched brusquely down the hallway to the right. It was not really a hallway; it was more like an enclosed thoroughfare. The forty foot ceiling had large, crystal, chandeliers every twenty or so feet. Cyrus counted six before they stopped. Tanner opened the two double doors they were standing next to, veered to the right as soon as he entered the room, and headed straight for a well-stocked bar that emerged from the side of the wall. He opened a canister of ice. In the center of the room, two light tan, leather sofas pointed to an immense, cherry red, oak desk which sat at the other end. Windowed doors filled the back wall and led to a large garden patio.
“You want a drink?” Tanner said to Cyrus and Max who were now sitting on the couch facing the bar. Tanner raised his hand abruptly, “Never mind, I know, I know, you are on duty. He staggered over to the couch opposite Cyrus and Max and fell down in the corner of it. Amazingly, he kept his drink balanced so that he didn’t spill a drop.
“I didn’t kidnap my daughter, Detective Fleming,” he said. “She has a heart murmur the same as her poor mother. She died of heart failure, you know. I was frantic. I’ve already lost two wives and a son. I didn’t want to lose her too. She’s all I have left.”
“You were frantic, I’m sure. But was it really over Kelsey? You sure it wasn’t to cover up something?”
“I got nothing to cover up.”
“According to Kelsey, Mike had the murder weapon and he drove up here with it about a week ago.”
“Is there a question in there?”
“Were you the only one here besides Mike that night?”
“There are a lot of people, workers – I do a lot of business here since Gabriela died. This place is more like my office than my office. Good God man, you implying I killed Mike? Go back to Santa Barbara and get your arrest warrant. I am done.”
“I wasn’t implying anything. I just wanted get an answer and I got one. Have you had any luck stopping the takeover of your company?”
“How do you know about the take over?” he said.
“You told Dana about it, remember. Do you know who’s behind it?” Cyrus said.
“Somebody’s buying up the stock and putting pressure on the board to fire me. They are trying to take my own company from me.”
“I thought TANOCO was a private company,” Cyrus said, marveling at the lucidity of the drunken man he was interrogating.
“We went public two years ago. I needed more capital for the development of our new drilling technique and because of the union.”
“What union?”
“The union Maverick Duncan was trying to organize. I am too small a company to support a union. I need my profits for reinvestment and expansion.”
“How would changing TANOCO from a private to a public company help?”
“If I went public, I could get a lot of capital from a lot of big investors.”
“How would that stop the union?”
“I waited for them to show their hand. Once they told the roustabouts and drillers what they would get if they voted for a union, I made them a counter offer.”
“Which you paid for with the extra capital from your new investors. Sounds like a shrewd deal. Did it work?”
“At first, Maverick couldn’t convince anyone to vote in favor of a union after I offered them a share in the company. I set up an ESOP-employee owned stock option plan. They loved it. I loved it actually. I used to be a roustabout. I like paying my employees good wages. But then things got bad and they are getting worse by the day.”
“What happened?”
“My investors started selling off their stock and Mike got involved with that Professor nut.”
“Bad publicity scared them off, right?”
“I am sure it didn’t help that my son was the target of an FBI investigation involving acts of environmental terrorism. But I don’t think that was the problem really.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, when I went public I hinted the news to people I trusted that TANOCO stock was about to hit the market. They knew of our new drilling technique and they snapped up all the available shares for twice the initial price.”
“What do mean you trusted them?”
“They were guys I knew from when I was a roustabout. They each had a several million to invest just to keep up their lifestyle. They liked to have the attention of young women, play golf every day, and talk about the old days. They didn’t care about running things anymore. I wasn’t afraid they’d try to leverage their shares for more say in the day to day operations of the company, they just wanted a check.”
“What happened?”
“They bought up the forty nine percent of the company I made available and then the next day every one of them sold off all their stock.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know. But whoever they were, they paid ten times the original price for the stock. And these investors are very much interested in TANOCO’s daily operations. They keep sending letters to the board expressing their great displeasure over my ability to run TANOCO. And more than once they’ve made threats against me.”
“Threats, you mean physical threats?”
“No, I get letters from some lawyer threatening to sue TANOCO for violating some state safety code, or failing to provide diversity training, or not having enough handicap facilities, you name it. But they always want to settle things by having me resign for the good of the company and promising me a very generous parachute for leaving.”
“You told Dana you didn’t think he killed Mike. He said you thought it might be a message from the people who are taking over your company.”
Jack pointed at Cyrus with his drink as he spoke, “That’s right. I don’t have any proof, of course. It just makes sense to me. These guys have dumped a lot of cash into my company and they probably don’t like having someone writing negative stories about it every week.”
“And I guess they also figure you’ll go ahead and sell off your interest and retire, am I right?”
“Could be. But if that’s what they’re thinking they’re dead wrong. I’ll find them, too, don’t worry about that.”
Tanner set his drink down and put his head on the pillow at one end of the couch. In an instant he fell asleep and started snoring.
“He’s the strangest drunk I’ve ever seen, Cyrus said, “Completely controlled, no slurred speech and just a little wobbly, then just like that he passes out. Really weird.”
Max walked over to Tanner and picked up his limp hand.
“His skin looks a little blue and he is not breathing so good.” Max knelt down and carefully pulled back one of his eyelids, “The pupils in his eyes are the size of quarters. I think he may be dying of alcohol poisoning.”
Cyrus looked over toward the bar and saw two empty bottles of Chevas Regal scotch whiskey. “Call an ambulance.”
“O.K., are you ready to go? I don’t think we are going to get any more answers from the sleeping leprechaun.”
“Not just yet, I want you to stay here and babysit Tanner. Wait a few minutes and if you see that he is coming to, call the ambulance and make a big ruckus about everything. I am going check out what’s down that hallway on the left. I know what the discharge of a shotgun sounds like and those three blasts did not come from a shotgun or any kind of weapon I have ever heard before.”
“Ditto, they sounded more like they came from some kind of metal banging around to me, what do I tell him if he wakes up?”
“Tell him I went looking for a bathroom, call an ambulance, and then send me a text message.”
“Right”
Cyrus walked out of the room and down the hall at a near run. The hallway on the left was nothing like the ornate structure leading to Tanner’s den. It was much cooler, barren of any decorations and brightly lit, like a factory. There were two large metal doors at the end of the hallway. He looked through the window of one of them and saw another set of metal doors with no windows. He could hear men shouting. He had to know what was behind those doors.
After he opened the first set of doors, he walked into the large lobby. The walls were lined with lockers and a coat rack with overalls on them. He tried the second door and it was locked. He could see through the door crack where the deadbolt went through. There was a slot for a magnetic card swipe. Pretty good security for a skeet range, Cyrus observed. Try the work clothes, he said to himself, and then he reached up to the top of the rack and pulled down several pair of oil stained, dungaree overalls. He ran his hands through their pockets until he found the prize he was looking for, a magnetic swipe card. He put on the largest pair of overalls of the two he had found and then a pair of discarded work boots from a large waste can. He couldn’t believe his luck; they fit a little big, but he could still walk in them.
He swiped the card. The metal dead bolt clicked sharply back and he pushed the door opened. He slipped into an immense room the size of an airplane hanger unnoticed. He choked for a moment from the pungent odor of burnt gunpowder mixed with petroleum. Bright lights from the halogen lamps the size of tractor trailer tires, placed all around the walls and suspended from the ceiling, lit the place up like it was daytime. The large metal door clanged shut behind him and the deadbolt slid back into place with a thud. He wasn’t yet sure what Tanner had going on here, but he knew for certain it was not a skeet range.
A maze of red and yellow painted steel tubes and valves stood before him. They surrounded a patio-sized, square, iron platform. In the middle of it was a metal cylinder mounted on an immense, orange colored, H shaped frame that shot up as tall as a rocket. It rotated and moved downward at the same time. The tube was actually a series of tubes, approximately twenty feet in length and connected together. The drill extended skyward close to a hundred feet in the air, Cyrus estimated. There was at least another hundred feet above it to the ceiling. No wonder Tanner’s house looks like a hotel, Cyrus said to himself, he is housing an oil rig, a large, state-of-the-art, oil rig. This is no one man, pooh boy operation, that’s for sure.
A man, wearing blue overalls and white hardhat walked up beside the H frame and poured liquid from a python girthed hose into a smaller tube that ran alongside the larger one.
“Hey buddy,” he called out to Cyrus, “you want to get fired! You are not supposed to be on the floor without a hardhat. Go over to the break room around back and get one. In fact you can use one of mine; it’s sitting on top of my locker. Look for the one with the name Lewis on it; it’ll be the first locker on the third row when you walk into the break room.”
Cyrus nodded his head and then walked back around behind the large iron platform and through the door to the room he assumed was the break room. He emerged wearing a hardhat with the name LEWIS written on the front. Cyrus waved to the tool pusher and he waved back,
“That’s better!”
Workers carrying various boxes of tools, parts, and cables, walked past him, oblivious to his presence. Cyrus got out his cell phone camera, turned it on, and started filming the men at the platform, holding it as though he were talking. As he was filming, three men approached him. Roughnecks, they call them, Cyrus said to himself. They carried a large metal apparatus up a ramp that led to the platform. Afraid of being detected, he closed the phone and clicked on the record audio button. When they passed him he grabbed part of the round, plug-like, metal object the men were carrying and followed them up the ramp. He wanted to find out what Tanner was hiding.
The platform had two large bore holes positioned about twenty feet apart. Standing around the bore hole on the left, Cyrus saw several men lower a new drill head down its opening. The man in charge, the tool pusher, crouched over the large hole, helping to guide the drill head downward.
“Lewis, bring over that casement packer!” he shouted and then once more. Cyrus noticed all the men on the ramp turn and stare at him. Then the man in charge stood up and pointing to Cyrus he squinted his eyes and then said, “You men over there, are you deaf? Bring that packer over here, now!”
Cyrus, together with the other men, brought the metal fitting over to the foreman, or driller. The driller motioned to Cyrus to place the end of the packer in line with the end of the cylinder. Cyrus figured the driller assumed he was in charge because he was the oldest. The funny thing was all the other men with him acted as if he were in charge as well.
“Hold it steady right there, that’s it.” He ordered and started attaching it to a large section of metal tube. Cyrus could feel his arms burning from holding up his small part of the heavy apparatus. When driller finished attaching the packer, he patted Cyrus on the back and motioned to the next crew of men to bring the metal apparatus they were holding over to him.
Cyrus separated from his three coworkers and walked over to the far side of the platform where another group of workers had congregated over another bore hole. Above it, a boom held up one end of a twenty foot section of casement pipe.
Cyrus did not like the way the pipe was hanging loosely at the end of a cable, swaying back and forth. It was then he realized the casement pipe was probably the source of the loud noise he and Max had heard previously. The next moment he spotted confirmation of his conjecture lying a few feet from the borehole, pushed up against the wall, twisted and bent.
The three men he saw loitering around this bore-hole were dressed in designer jeans and polo shirts. They each had a lab notebook. Their faces and hands were clean and they were drinking coffee. One of the men was much larger than the other two, tall and blonde. He had a prominent Roman nose and large, blue, eyes. Cyrus guessed his age to be mid-forties. His relaxed attitude around his two companions gave Cyrus the impression he was the senior engineer. Cyrus could read the name on his lab book written in large black letters: Peter Grigoryan.
The other two men were shorter and very young, probably just out of college only a couple of years. Cyrus assumed they were engineers or geophysicists since they weren’t actually doing anything. He photographed them and the extra bore hole with his cell phone camera. He checked to make sure he had the audio on. He walked a few feet away, over to the rear of the platform next to two vending machines, one with coffee and one with sandwiches. Cyrus stood by them and acted as if he were trying to make up his mind which sandwich he was going to buy.
“It’s too bad about Tanner’s kid” he heard the youngest looking one say. Cyrus read his badge: Herb Pokorny.
“Didn’t happen soon enough if you ask me,” Grigoryan replied.
The other engineers widened their eyes. Herb shook his head. “Don’t let Tanner hear you say things like that, he wouldn’t like it.”
“I am not worried. Tanner can’t run this drill without me. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good oilman, but he doesn’t know the first thing about lateral drilling. My father forgot more about this kind of operation than Tanner will ever know.
“Yeah, this is a special kind of drilling,” Herb said, “Kent and I never learned anything about this method when we were in school. We learned about multi-lateral drilling, but we’ve never seen it done this way. I didn’t know you could drill for oil in a horizontal direction for more than a third of a mile without drilling vertically again somewhere else down the line.”
Grigoryan smiled, and then he said, “That’s because Alexander Grigoryan, my father, was inventing the new technique while you were still in school.”
The engineers nodded their heads in unison. Herb looked at the senior engineer with a frown and then said, “So why did you say that about Tanner’s kid anyway, Grigoryan? He was always nice to us. I don’t get it.”
Grigoryan lowered the lab notebook he had been reading and pointed his pen at his subordinate. “To our face he’s nice! But when writes about us in his paper he stabs us in the back.”
“Yeah, we thought those articles were a hoot, actually.”
The two engineers snickered. Grigoryan was not amused. He curled up his notebook and glared down at the two younger engineers.
“A hoot? He said we were ‘greedy little Eichmanns’ and he said we didn’t care if the environment was destroyed by burning oil, just as long we got paid. I hate ingrates. I wonder how he would like living with no oil to power his Daddy’s big jet or his big truck.”
“You take this stuff too serious, Grigoryan,” Kent said, “I agree with Herb. None of that politics makes him deserving of getting killed, does it? I mean, so what he was a little nutty about the environment and all, that’s not reason enough to be glad the poor guy was dead.”
Grigoryan uncurled and curled his notebook several times and then spoke. “He did more than write libelous articles about his father and TANOCO. He tried to bring this company down with those articles he wrote.”
Cyrus heard a commotion going on at the other bore hole and turned his attention away from the engineer’s conversation. The driller was in one of the roustabouts face. “He can’t get in here without a badge!” He waved his arms wildly as he spoke. “No exceptions, everybody has to swipe a card. That’s how we keep track. He has to apply for a replacement.”
The three engineers stopped talking and looked over to the driller. Herb called over to him, “Something wrong, driller man?”
Cyrus surmised they were going to find out real soon he was there, especially if and when they found his shoes. He looked for a way out. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back through those metal doors, so he walked down the platform ramp and over to what looked like a warehouse area on the eastern most end of the building. It was where large crates, probably filled with tools and parts were stored. When he made his way around a corner, he found a door that led to a long hallway. He walked down the length of it, uncertain what he was going to find. He could hear the constant hum of idling diesel engines. If those are vehicles they must have another way out, he said to himself.
At the end of the hallway was another doorway and through it, to his relief, he could see open night sky, stars and all. Two large tanker trucks sat in the open driveways of the large garage-like structure. Hoses ran from fittings sunk in the concrete floor to the back of the tankers. They looked like large, brown pythons, bouncing up and down rhythmically. The noise from the pumps pushing out the crude deafened him. Bright flood lights lit up the spaces where the tankers were parked, but on Cyrus’s side of the garage everything was pitch black. He could hear men’s voices reverberating throughout the room. After a moment of searching, he spotted them sitting on a bench watching the crude filling up the tanks. There were three of them. One of the men wore oil stained overalls and a hard hat, and Cyrus surmised he was almost certainly part of the oil crew. The other man, clean shaven and stout, wore clean jeans and held a clipboard. He must be the driver, Cyrus said to himself. He studied the appearance of the third man and after several minutes realized he was the same homeless man he saw at Rincon Beach when he arrested Dana.
Cyrus stayed close to the wall, out of the light, and made his way to the edge of the opening and then checking to see that no one was looking, he darted out. He followed the road back to the front of the mansion. He was just about to round the corner when he heard the sound of several sirens. At the same time he heard the buzz from his cell phone. It was a text message from Max, it read the following: Tanner O.K., called ambulance to distract him. Get back.
Cyrus watched Max come outside on the porch. He watched Max meet with the EMT’s and it appeared to him that Max was giving them some instructions. Then he saw him bring his hand to his forehead and turned his head from side to side. Probably wondering where I am, Cyrus thought to himself. Cyrus jogged over to the front porch, discarded his overalls, and waved to Max as he headed for the squad car.
They reached their destination at the same time. He and Max opened the car doors and got in. Cyrus started up the engine, wheeled the car around the ambulance, and sped off down the long Tanner mansion driveway.
Once they were on the freeway Cyrus spoke, “There is no skeet range. The noise was coming from a warehouse sized room that I think is an oil rig, maybe two, on the east side of his mansion. The noise we heard was casement pipe falling from about fifty feet and hitting the concrete.”
“I guess old man Tanner was telling the truth. There are a lot of people around here. But it doesn’t matter, right? Jack Tanner is the only one who could’ve known the bat belonged to Dana and then had Mike killed with it so Dana would be framed.”
“Not true,” Cyrus replied.
“How’s that?”
“Peter Grigoryan, that’s how. He’s the head honcho on the oil rig. I overheard him talking to a couple of subordinates about how much he hated Mike Tanner and wished he had been killed sooner.”
“How’d he know about the bat?”
“Let’s ask him. Call Bailey and find out what kind of car he drives.”
“There’s a rest center a few miles up ahead; we can wait there for him. But I am not sitting in this car with you any longer unless you do one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Throw those work boots in the trash can; you’re stinking up the new car.”
“Oh I forgot. Damn! I threw my good shoes in a trash bin and those were brand new hundred dollar Rockports, too.”