Stone Cold

4

Joe and Special Agent Coon spent the ten minutes it took to drive from the capitol to the Federal Building updating each other on their families. Although he was the same age as Joe, Coon had started his family later in life and was going through situations Joe found strangely nostalgic. Coon’s oldest daughter was in her second year of high school and had turned sullen, spending all of her time with her friends or texting with them in her room. Joe laughed, saying it sounded familiar. Coon’s son was in the eighth grade and was a struggling point guard for the McCormick Warriors.

“He assumes he’ll get bigger, faster, and quicker,” Coon said. “How do I tell him it may not happen?”

Joe shrugged. “Just go to the games and cheer him on. Believe me, he’ll be the first to know.”

Joe outlined what was happening with Sheridan, Lucy, and April. As he did, Coon shook his head.

“Three teenage girls,” he said. “And I thought I had trouble.”

“They’re not trouble,” Joe said. “But they’re weighing on my mind right now.”

Inside the ugly federal building in central Cheyenne, Joe surrendered his weapon, cell phone, badge, cuffs, and bear spray, and argued with the officer to keep his hat. Coon intervened and told the security officer it was all right. Joe traded his possessions for a VISITOR laminate that he clipped on the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. They rode the elevator together — Joe’s normal life was without elevators — and he followed Coon through a large room filled with cubicles and out-of-date computers to the supervisor’s corner office.

Joe liked Coon, and they’d been involved in several situations over the years, although from different angles. Coon was professional, straight-up, and generally by-the-book. He’d chosen to stay and work in the Mountain West and not use the smallest state FBI office as a stepping-stone to a more high-profile post, unlike his predecessors. When Joe sat down, Coon outlined the agreement he’d reached with the governor’s office: Joe would go to Medicine Wheel County and report directly to Coon, and he’d advise Rulon; Joe’s role was not law enforcement or investigation but information gathering; Joe was not to represent himself as either an agent of the FBI or the governor’s office; Joe was to extricate himself immediately if the situation turned dangerous.

Joe raised both of his hands shoulder height and dangled them and said, “Do I look enough like a puppet to fit the bill?”

“Very funny,” Coon said. “The idea here is Medicine Wheel County locals are used to seeing their game warden poking around. Your presence won’t stir them up. And if they get an idea to check out your credentials, they’ll find out that you are indeed a Wyoming game warden of many years.”

Joe lowered his arms to his lap. “This is unusual,” he said, “you working with the governor instead of against him.”

Coon said, “I know it appears that way sometimes, and believe me, I have higher-ups who don’t exactly like your governor. But I’m trying to mend some fences here. This antagonism between the national government and the states out here can’t last forever. And if we can work together on this, everybody wins.”

“Gotcha.”

“So, who is Wolfgang Templeton?” Coon asked rhetorically from behind his desk. “Answer is: we’re not sure.”

For the next half-hour, Chuck Coon leafed through a file on his desk and hit the highlights. When Joe reached for his spiral notebook to take notes, Coon said it wasn’t necessary, that the file in front of him was a redacted copy and that he’d give it to Joe to take with him to study when they were done. Joe sat back and listened, shaking his head several times.

Wolfgang Peter Templeton was born on a country estate between Porters and Pickerel lakes in eastern Pennsylvania to a father who was a college dean and a pediatrician mother. He’d been sent to private schools and appointed to West Point. Templeton had served as an officer in the army and was decorated for heroism for acts during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 when he was a commander in the army’s Rapid Deployment Force, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions and the 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers. His niche was Special Ops. After twenty years in the service, Templeton had retired from the military and founded one of the first hedge fund companies in New York City and was wildly successful and an influential leader in global high finance and an annual participant in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Templeton had married Hillary (Rothschild) Swain of Sagaponack in the Hamptons, New York — she was one of two heirs to the Allegheny Group, a consortium of defense contractors. The wedding had taken place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a massive reception at Tavern on the Green that was covered by theNew York Times. He was a Republican and rumored to have political ambitions and had given the green light to an exploratory committee in his home state of Pennsylvania, with his eye on the U.S. Senate.

Coon slid four eight-by-ten photographs across his desk, and Joe caught them. In the first and most dated, Templeton wore combat fatigues and cut a striking figure on a beach — probably Grenada. In the second, he wore a tuxedo and stood arm in arm with a beautiful woman — Swain, no doubt — in a flowing white wedding gown. In the third, he stared straight at the camera lens from behind a desk with the Manhattan skyline visible through the window behind him. The last photo was of Templeton at a lectern with other well-dressed men and women, obviously signaling the morning opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

Templeton was lean and angular, with an almost old-fashioned regal bearing, Joe thought. He had a strong jaw, an aquiline nose, large hands, and wide shoulders. His eyes exuded intelligence, competence, and warmth. In the most recent photographs, Templeton wore a thin mustache that gave him a rakish air, like a 1930s movie star.

In 2001, Coon read, Templeton divorced and suddenly sold his firm for millions just prior to 9/11 and seemed to vanish. There were short items noting his sudden departure in the Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily, with one of the journalists speculating that Templeton, like Icarus, had perhaps “journeyed too close to the financial sun” during his meteoric rise. Joe thought perhaps that was when he’d first heard the name — while reading the Wall Street Journal in his dentist’s office.

Coon paused and looked up at Joe and said, “I feel like I’m reading about the interworkings of an entirely different planet.”

“For the first time in my life, I feel like James Bond,” Joe said.

“The bureau had no interest in Templeton during his military career, his rise in business, and his decision to move on with his life,” Coon said, nodding at the materials on his desk. “In case you were wondering.”

“I was,” Joe said. “Then why the file?”

“This was all assembled later, after 2006,” Coon said, thumbing back. “The backstory was put together by staffers in Washington.”

“So what’s the front story?” Joe asked. “Why was a file on him even opened?”

Coon explained that Wolfgang Templeton’s name first came up in an interview with a confidential informant seven years prior, during an investigation of a U.S. senator who was suspected of accepting bribes from Middle Eastern governments. The CI knew the senator from their mutual participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and during the interview he brought up an unrelated event: the still-unsolved kidnapping of a scion of a privately held brewery fortune in Saint Louis in 2004. The heir to the fortune, Jonah Lamprecht, was bad news on wheels, Coon said. Lamprecht was a forty-six-year-old playboy who’d been arrested twice for aggravated assault and forcible rape but had lawyered up and beat the charges both times.

“Lamprecht was high-profile,” Coon said, “and sort of a poster child for slipping date-rape drugs to young women and assaulting them. One victim finally came forward and three other women said, ‘Me too.’ You can imagine how the Lamprecht family felt. Jonah was also supposedly involved in sex-tourism rings and excursions to Thailand and the Dominican Republic.”

Coon said Lamprecht had enough underworld connections — and enemies — that when his Lamborghini Aventador was found parked and empty on a tree-lined road at the St. Louis Country Club, no one was shocked. When a ransom letter arrived demanding $5 million for his safe return, the extended Lamprecht family had brought in the FBI. A second letter arrived three days later, saying that because the family had disobeyed instructions not to involve law enforcement, Jonah would be killed.

Coon said, referencing the file, “No suspects were ever found, and no body. The letters were analyzed and provided zero evidence of any kind — no fingerprints, DNA, nothing. They were postmarked from Saint Louis and printed on a laser printer with Microsoft Word. The case remains open. But this CI told our people that it was whispered among the big shots at Davos that members of the Lamprecht family had hired someone to disappear Jonah two years before. The name he floated was Wolfgang Templeton. According to the CI, it was understood among the hoity-toity Davos types that if any of them needed something done in their private lives or businesses and they were willing to pay a ton of money to get it done right, Wolfgang Templeton was the man to contact.

“That’s when the file was opened,” Coon said, thumbing ahead. “Now jump to 2008. Two Columbia grad students launched a computer application in their dorm room that supposedly, through some kind of voodoo algorithm, would go out and search the Internet and assemble an email list of like-minded consumers based on their social network posts and Internet searches and crap like that. They claimed they could create surefire customer lists for specific products. When the word got out, all the big Internet companies beat a path to their door because no one else had been able to figure it out yet so specifically. Everybody wanted to buy their little start-up, and the bidding began. We’re talking billions of dollars here—”

Joe said, “I know the rest. I remember reading about it. Just a week or so before the auction, a third grad student named Brandon Fonnesbeck pops up and says the two guys stole the algorithm from him, and he claims he has emails from them to prove it. Then, before he can reveal the evidence, Fonnesbeck’s boat is spotted off of Long Island and he’s not on it. His body is never found.”

Coon raised his eyebrows, impressed. “And here I thought you spent all your time checking fishing licenses.”

“What do you know?” Joe said sarcastically. “Continue.”

Coon smiled. “So three years ago, another CI is in a bar in Silicon Valley, drinking vodka with a group of high-tech CEOs. They’re railing on and on about Apple — how they hate Steve Jobs, who they say keeps stealing stuff out from under them and making billions of dollars from their work. One of these guys jokes that they ought to get together and pool funds and hire somebody to disappear Jobs. It’s a joke, and they never did anything. But when Jobs died of natural causes, our CI remembered the conversation. Guess what name came up that night?”

“Wolfgang Templeton,” Joe said.

“Correct,” Coon said. “Which says to me there is a certain name recognition of this guy among a certain level of people. The kind of people who travel on private planes and own multibillion-dollar firms. We’re talking about a level where high-finance types and politicians mix together — the elite. They interact with one another at conferences and forums like Davos. And when they talk off the record to each other about their problems, apparently the name Wolfgang Templeton comes up.”

Joe nodded and sat back. The hook was set.

“Have you ever questioned him?” Joe asked.

“Me personally, no. I’ve never laid eyes on him. But after his name came up on the Lamprecht kidnapping, two agents from our New Orleans office — Templeton was living in one of those old plantation mansions at the time, I guess — went and knocked on his door. He said he had no relationship at all with the Lamprecht family and had no idea what they were talking about. They described him in the file as very courteous and helpful, but useless in their investigation. The agents had nothing to pin on him — no witnesses, no evidence — just that his name had come up. Reading it, well, it’s kind of embarrassing. Templeton had alibis for the date of the kidnapping, and those agents were sent home with their tails between their legs.”

“And now he lives in Wyoming?” Joe said, shaking his head. “How’d that happen?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Coon said. “Apparently, he sold out in New Orleans shortly after that visit by our guys and quietly bought the place in Medicine Wheel County. He did it under the radar, through third-party firms. Nothing illegal about that, but it indicates a penchant toward secrecy.”

Coon paused, looking over the transaction records. “But again, I guess it isn’t so unusual among the rich and well connected. They know if word gets out that they’re interested in a certain property, the price might go up. So they conduct an anonymous transaction that keeps their name out of it until it’s done. And when he relocates to Wyoming, the file goes cold. The bureau has so much on its plate these days we couldn’t devote any manpower to what really amounts to snippets of gossip.”

Joe waited for the other shoe to drop. It did.

Coon said, “But now there’s something else much more recent. In fact, just a month ago, and I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

Joe waited.

Coon said, “The disappearance of Henry P. Scoggins the Third.”

Joe sat up. Of course he’d heard about it. Scoggins had vanished from his own fishing lodge on the Bighorn River under the watchful eyes of a private security team. Speculation had run from kidnapping — which seemed unlikely, even though the questioning of locals and members of the Crow tribe had brought accusations of harassment and racism — to the possibility that Scoggins had sleep-walked into the river during the night and drowned. His body had never been found.

“What do you have that might tie Templeton to Henry Scoggins?” Joe asked.

“Practically nothing,” Coon said, and rubbed at his face with his hands, “except Scoggins seems to fit the profile. Extremely wealthy. Hated bitterly by his enemies, who are also extremely wealthy and connected, and among that elite set we just identified. No explanation for his disappearance. No body. Except this time we might have a lead, although it’s a damned thin one.”

Coon paused for a long time.

Joe said, “Now comes the part I may not like, right?”

Coon nodded wordlessly and flipped to the last few pages of the file.

“The affidavits from the security team seem hinky to me, but you can be the judge of that when you read them over. Something happened that night they’re not being truthful about, is my intuition. That’s all it is — intuition. I’d like to question them myself — especially this Jolovich guy, who was the head of the security detail. But right now, I don’t have enough backup to call him in or make the trip.

“But we have two other pieces that interest me and I think will interest you.”

Coon said, “A member of the Crow tribe named Benny Black Eagle was bait-fishing on the river before dawn the morning after the disappearance. He said he saw a private plane land on an old abandoned runway about a mile upriver from where he was. He saw a man carry a big duffel bag of some kind from the river to the plane, and then the plane took off, heading southeast.”

“Could he identify the man or the pilot?”

Coon shook his head. “Too far and too dark. He could barely see them at all. But we know there was no FAA flight plan filed by anyone for that morning for that airstrip.”

“The bag—”

“Could have been the size of a body. But maybe not. He wasn’t sure. But we do know Templeton has a pilot’s license and at least one private plane, maybe two.”

Joe was confused. “Where is this headed?”

Coon said, “The tribal police up there talked to a couple of members — girls — who told them about meeting a Caucasian a couple of days before Scoggins disappeared. The guy gave them a ride from the Scoggins compound to a bar near Hardin. They really liked him, but they didn’t get his name. A police artist was called in, and here’s what he came up with.” He handed a rough composite across the desk to Joe.

He looked at it. A rough face, hawklike nose, piercing eyes. Joe felt a chill roll down his back.

“Something else,” Coon said, sliding over a mottled black-and-white photo. “All the electronic surveillance of the Scoggins compound was disabled and the hard drives were missing from the computers. But there was an old trail cam mounted on a tree the bad guys must not have known about.”

Joe was familiar with trail cameras that were used by landowners and hunters to get nighttime images of passing wildlife. He’d used trail-cam images to implicate poachers on private land as well.

The photo was grainy and of poor quality, and had obviously been enlarged. Tree trunks were brilliant white stripes against black, and the brush looked haunting and skeletal. The single image was unfocused, but in the distance he could clearly see the form of a man who appeared to be leaning forward as he walked, as if dragging something heavy behind him.

The side of his face couldn’t be clearly seen, but the set of his shoulders and the outline of his frame were familiar enough.

“You know him best,” Coon said. “Is that your pal Nate Romanowski?”

“Can’t say for sure.”

“How in the hell did he get mixed up with Wolfgang Templeton, is what I’d like to know,” Coon said.

“Me too,” Joe whispered.

“When was the last time you saw Nate Romanowski?” Coon asked.

Joe looked up. The FBI had been trying to find Nate for years to question him about several unsolved disappearances. Coon had not pursued the search with the intensity of his predecessors, but Nate was still listed as a federal fugitive.

“Last year,” Joe said. “He showed up at my home and helped me out with that train wreck of a search for Butch Roberson.”

“I can’t recall you reporting that to me,” Coon said icily.

“That’s because I didn’t.”

“But you’ve not seen him since?”

“No,” Joe said. “Nate is… unusual in his habits. He’ll just show up, and we never know where he goes when he leaves.”

“Any idea where he’s been living?”

“No. I assumed Idaho, but I might be wrong.”

“My guess,” Coon said, “is he’s now based in Medicine Wheel County.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Nate has his own style. But he’s not a kidnapper or a hired killer.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Joe took a moment to answer. “Somewhat.”

Joe recalled the last time he’d seen his friend. Nate had come across as slightly unhinged — more excitable and more violent. Joe attributed it to what Nate had gone through the year before that, when he’d been tracked down by an old mentor.

Had Nate discarded his unique set of principles and gone off the deep end?

Coon said, “Take the file and study it. I’ve got a conference call with Washington in five minutes on another matter. Call me if you’ve got questions, and keep me informed on what you find out when you get up there. And, Joe, don’t do anything stupid.”

Joe didn’t respond. He was still reeling from the revelations.

“Joe?” Coon prompted.

Joe looked at his watch. It was nearly noon. He had four hours before Rulon One was scheduled to take him back to Saddlestring.

“Can I borrow a car?” Joe asked.

“You want to borrow a government car? You? With your track record?”

Joe grinned. “My daughter needs her winter coat and you have a motor pool full of government cars.”

“I swear, if anything happens to one of our vehicles, I’ll take it out of your hide,” Coon said, shaking his head.

“What could possibly go wrong?” Joe asked with a slight grin.