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Bridger acknowledged the preacher’s concession with a nod. “Thank you.”
“But you don’t need to interrogate him, I hope. Randall doesn’t know the details. He writes the checks to me. I’m the one who leaves the money at the drop off point. He doesn’t even know where it is. There’s no need to—”
“We won’t bother Mr. Dressler unless we have good reason to do so,” Bridger assured him. “You’re going to have to trust us on that.”
The pastor didn’t look happy, but what could he do?
Bridger didn’t mention that he planned to question this Dressler guy ASAP. He’d get his old cyber expert to dig into the guy’s past associations. If there was a connection, she’d find it, but in the meantime, he wanted to know why a congregant would be so generous and insist on such secrecy.
Tai looked faintly astonished. “Are you saying you actually put cash in a hidey hole? Is this blackmailer from the nineteen eighties or something?” He eyed Bridger. “Haven’t they heard of PayPal?”
Bridger shrugged. The detail seemed odd to him, too.
“I get the demands via text,” the pastor said.
Bridger shared a look with his friend. “Untraceable number, I’m sure.”
Tai nodded. “No doubt.”
Interesting. Hard to know what went through the mind of a blackmailer. Maybe the person had other fish on the line for a while. Or maybe they bought a new boat and needed to tap Pastor Zack for money again. There could be a million possible reasons for the inconsistency.
But then to turn to attempted murder. Weird.
Either way, he had enough info to start with. More than Jason had started with. All the pastor gave him was a list of the phone numbers the blackmailer used. “Let’s get to it,” he told Tai.
The big pastor looked wrung out, and relieved, when they left.
“Where we headed?” Tai asked as he contorted himself into the Jeep.
“Time to visit Mr. Randall Dressler.”
Tai showed his phone to Bridger. The map program glowed on the screen, an address already captured by a red pin. “I knew you were going to say that. We should swing by the hardware store. Jane’ll want to come along.”
Bridger backed the Jeep out of the driveway. “Not gonna happen.”
Tai snorted. “I knew you were gonna say that, too.”
17
Randall Dressler wasnothing like Bridger expected. Given the short bio Tai read on the drive up to the man’s palatial home on the plateau overlooking the valley, he imagined a local boy complete with tattoos and a beer belly. But Randall was slender and clean-shaven. More Wall Street chic than small town cowboy.
From his close-cropped blonde hair to his uniform tennis tan and gleaming white Nikes, the guy screamed wealth and sophistication.
So why hang out in a thousand-person town a four-hour drive from the nearest metropolis?
Whatever the reasons, Bridger disliked the guy on sight.
The fact that Dressler came outside to meet them, shutting the door behind him, only added to Bridger’s irritation.
Dressler folded his arms across his chest and widened his stance, obviously not planning to let them in. “The pastor just called. I’m not sure I have anything to say to you.”
Bridger nodded amiably. “Fair enough.”
It took less than half a second to assess the target. Intimidation wouldn’t work with this guy. Bridger could threaten the man with lawyers, though from the looks of the outsized mansion, Dressler probably had plenty of those on retainer, too.
Still, everyone had a pain point. What was this guy afraid of?
He eyed the street behind them. The few sprawling homes in the subdivision were completely out of eyesight. Engine noise caught his ear. A lone mail truck struggled up the steep road.
