Chapter 16: State Police Leak

“Something is so rotten I haven’t been able to think of anything else since we walked through the burned wreckage of that prisoner transport bus,” Sheriff Nelson told Buck and Reese. The three men were meeting in Reese’s private office in his Yankee Girl residence. The door was closed; it was a mid-Saturday and the women and children were off shopping in Twin Falls.

“Let me guess,” Reese said. “It’s the State Patrol situation in the Idaho Falls District.”

“Yes. First, there’s the information rabbit hole. All requests for information to them gets lost, side-tracked, or ignored. Then there was the snafu with the false deputy and the refusal to let my deputies accompany the prisoner bus. There’s still no action or any word on the missing state deputy that should have come with the bus but was obviously waylaid and taken out by the false deputy,” Nelson said.

“Now here’s the latest. I got a call last evening from Jack Evans with Justice in DC. Frankly, I think he busted security with this info, but he felt it important that I know. The FBI has been monitoring ISP phones at the Idaho Falls office. They’re looking everywhere. They’re angry. We suspect the ISP; they suspect the ISP. Everyone involved trying to get a handle on this situation suspects possible deep infiltration and wide-spread corruption but there’s nothing tangible, no hard linkage or evidence. So they’re monitoring the ISP Idaho Falls district since that’s the obvious point of contact. Too much went wrong with that prisoner transport, directly linked to the ISP District office, but nobody has provable evidence short of tearing the place apart and interrogating everyone there.

“The FBI did tell Evans they’ve information that a state deputy is missing and presumed dead but no body has been found. That’s got to be the deputy that was replaced by the ringer my people spotted. Now we’re all wondering why we’ve heard nothing about it. Normally it would be all over the wires, the news, and the alert lines to regional law enforcement. That’s unusual. I’ve got to wonder if it’s a cover-up or a serious case of agency embarrassment. Anyway, it’s a huge stink that I’m smelling.”

“Reese and I have been discussing this mess,” Buck added. “Obviously there’s serious leak somewhere. Who else knew about the prisoner transport timing and the transport staffing? We knew, your office knew, and the FBI in Salt Lake knew. Who else? The Idaho Falls office of the state patrol knew. But again, we’ve got no proof.

“Did Evans say anything about FBI or Justice Department follow-up? Are they going to probe deeper into the ISP office?”

“He didn’t say anything specific. I assume they’ll keep monitoring. I don’t know when or if Jack will get more information or how much more his contacts will share. We’ll hope for more information but I’m pretty certain we’ll need to cover ourselves.”

A fisherman in a back-water pool along the Snake River south of Idaho Falls made a gruesome discovery: the body of a uniformed state deputy washed up among driftwood in the sandy mud. He looped a line around the body and anchored it to the bank to prevent it washing away, and called the authorities. It was the missing man who’d been assigned to accompany the prisoner bus. He’d been shot in the back of the head, execution style. This news made all the media, statewide.

DJ Brewster was an unhappy man. He slammed his telephone handset down into its cradle and, in a fit of pique, swept the telephone base off the desk and it crashed to the floor. He was alone in his second floor office. No one heard his profane outburst of anger and frustration. His ranch manager was over in the other building. The household domestic staff were downstairs and out of hearing.

“Damned Delgado!” he raged. DJ was worried, afraid, and he hated that feeling. Too many incidents, too close to home, to him. Too many failures. What should have been slam-dunk easy moves, had been thwarted. Rarely had anything gone so badly wrong before, ever! And that damned Delgado! Insanely angry over some money, over a loser junkie who stole and ran! Delgado insisted that an example be made and the fact that the junkie and his whore were running provoked Delgado to send more men, to take more chances. Where would it end?

That comic opera disaster at the Yankee Girl mine! One of his own men involved, interrogated. Came within an eyelash of implicating DJ! And that kidnapping that ended in a multi-agency debacle on Mill Creek summit, involving the Forest Service and the Sheriff’s Department, with Delgado’s men captured and interrogated. What the HELL would happen next?

DJ had sent a message to Delgado: “Back off! There’s too much heat here, too many incidents, and too many eyes looking at us locally.”

And Delgado sent a rude reply: “Do not presume to tell me my business!”

And that was it. He dared not anger the Mexican cartel boss. DJ had his own power base, his own men, but he was no match for the cartel and its reach, its vicious retaliation when angered. For the first time in memory DJ was feeling helpless to control events. He dare not sit back and let events spin further out of control. He needed to counter-attack, to put an end to the Yankee Girl interference. He’d take the Yankee Girl for himself and eliminate that damned half-breed and that old man from his life. He’d take their mine from them, gain its wealth for himself, and he’d see them dead in Hell!

“We need to get control of this situation,” Reese told Buck. “We’ve got to flush ‘em out, whoever it is.”

“By setting a trap?” Buck said.

“Isn’t that how to catch a rat?” Reese asked.

“Yup. But we need some good bait,” Buck answered. “I think we’ve got a whole satchel of it in the safe. Isn’t that what started this thing for us in the first place? That damned money?”

Sheriff Nelson agreed with the plan. He’d be the trigger.

Two days later he called the Idaho Falls state patrol district commander with a request: “Please be aware I may call on you for assistance to apprehend a probable out-of-state vehicle, possibly with Nevada plates, driven by a blackmail suspect fleeing with a large quantity of cash.”

“What the hell, Nelson?” the commander asked. “What’s going on up there?”

“One of our local residents is being threatened by somebody out of Las Vegas who claims knowledge of a large stash of cash stolen from a drug distributer in their area. This caller demands that our resident turn over the cash or they’ll be exposed or killed. Our resident reports he’s been ordered to meet with the blackmailer, ostensibly to comply with the blackmail demand. We’ve got our resident wired to record the meeting, and we don’t expect any trouble but I’m covering my bases. Just in case it goes sour and we lose the suspect vehicle, I want to call on you folks for an intercept.”