Dead Point (Maggie Blackthorne Book 1)

by LaVonne Griffin-Valade

  She looped the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “I should get to work.”

  “Call me anytime if you remember that rancher’s name. Night or day.”

  “Okay, Maggie. I will.”

  Ariel drove her battered little Datsun pickup back toward John Day. After a few minutes of watching the sun sear through the clouds and light up the spire of Dead Point and the indigo mountains west and east, I followed her back down Canyon Mountain.

  Shortly after I arrived at the office, Taylor came and stood warily at my desk.

  “Cecil Burney is here. Says he needs to speak to you right away.”

  “Tell him I’ll be with him shortly.” I turned to Hollis, deep into his excavation of some website. “Did you hear that?”

  He came up for air. “What’s up?”

  “Cecil Burney is paying me a surprise visit.”

  “Hell must have finally frozen over.”

  “Well, if anyone would know, it’d be him.”

  On purpose, I kept Cecil waiting for about ten minutes. I found him sitting patiently in the plastic deck chair next to the row of coat hooks.

  He stood as I entered the waiting area, his fierce, bleary eyes trained my way. “Need to talk to you somewhere private.”

  The choices for private conversation were limited: the storage closet, the evidence locker, the lavatory, and the alcove now taken over by murder boards. I led him to the storage closet, pulled the chain to turn on the single bulb overhead, and set up two folding chairs. He closed the door and we sat, stuffed awkwardly in one another’s air.

  “Sorry, Cecil, this is the best I can offer,” I said, hoping to quell any desire he might have to bolt.

  He peered round the space, the boxes of blank forms, utility pencils, and paper towels. “I’ve talked to cops in worse places.”

  I noticed his trembling hands. His body was fighting coming off the booze. “You here to tell me about that trouble between you and the Nodine boys?”

  He nodded, leaned forward in his chair wincing, his head hung barely above my lap. “Their mama. She and I had a thing way back when. It was Lynn who ended it, said I was a worse drunk than Farley.”

  I already knew this part of Cecil’s story, but I sat quietly.

  “Then somehow them sons of hers found out and started makin’ my life hell. First vandalizing my place, then slicing my pickup tires, stealing tools. Finally caught me passed out in my rig, drug me out to the pavement, and kicked the living shit outta me. I woke up, took myself to the hospital, and after that, bought myself a shotgun. I started takin that long-barreled hog with me everywhere.”

  Like a lot of people out here, Cecil slipped his word endings now and then, made up improper contractions on occasion, and used the incorrect verb tense sometimes. But that habit was a nod to local custom, not necessarily a sign of poor aptitude. A rural Oregon affectation, so to speak.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  He winced again. “You know why.”

  Tobacco and cheap scotch alone wouldn’t account for the baleful rasp in his voice.

  “Because you fucking hate cops.”

  Cecil grunted. “You might be the exception.”

  “Finish what you came here to say to me.”

  “When those boys was shipped off to prison for a while, I didn’t have to worry about them intimidating me or messing with my stuff.”

  “Didn’t have to worry about shooting them with your long-barreled hog either.” The closed-in space was becoming intolerable. “But then they got out of prison.”

  “And left me alone at first. Then about six months ago, they gut-shot my border collie with a goddamn thirty-aught-six.”

  Cecil juddered in his shoulders and flailed, trying to catch his breath. Finally overcome, he could do nothing but bawl into his open palms and shake his head. “Those fucking shits killed my Billy.”

  He wept quietly. Even though I had to keep a firm grip on my professional judgment and even knowing this man might be a murderer, it was all I could do not to wrap my arms around the old bastard and weep with him.

  After several minutes, he lifted himself out of his grief and breathed deeply. “Okay. I’m ready to tell you the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Last Thursday, I was locking up my gas station, about to leave for the AA meeting, I seen the Nodines pass by goin’ north on 395. They wasn’t driving their army jeep but that fat, red monster truck you asked me about. Anyways, I took off, hanging back so they wouldn’t notice me. Then they turned down the road to the old sawmill.”

  He paused, his hands quavering.

  “Did you follow them?”

  “I pulled to the shoulder and parked. Don’t know what I was planning, and I had to get to gettin’ if I was going to make the AA meeting. But while them fucks drove down the highway, I’d watched that Rottweiler standing in the truck bed. Bobbing around, howling and barking. And I thought about Billy. Killed for no reason.”

  He shifted his face toward the ceiling, closed his eyes.

  “What happened next?”

  “Got Billy as a pup. He was all I had. So I started my pickup, went slow down the dirt road, stopped just past the gate behind a wide clump of junipers. I grabbed my shotgun and inched toward the wigwam burner. I saw ’em in there, one on the phone, one yelling shit. While the Rottweiler pranced around free. I stepped quick to the opening, raised the shotgun. I blew a hole in the trailer and gut-shot their dog. Then I run, sure they’d go after me with that thirty-aught-six they had in their gun rack. But they didn’t.”

  “You know I have to charge you with a felony. It could mean time in jail, prison even.”

  “I know. Deserved. Not because of the Rottweiler, neither. I should’ve come forward earlier, told you what happened after. If I had, maybe Lynn could’ve found some peace and stayed on the wagon.”

  I was tiring of his capacity to string out the plot. “So tell me now. What happened after?”

  “To get back on 395, I would’ve had to drive back past the Nodines and their rifle. So I decided to keep on the mill road, take the long way to John Day. I was about to pull out when Kat McKay’s Land Rover flew around the corner and ground to a stop.”

  Rain had been the one applying a lead foot to the Land Rover the morning I went to Kat’s place to tell her about Dan Nodine’s murder.

  “Did you recognize the driver?”

  “It was Kat all right.”

  “Did she see you?

  “Pretty sure she had no idea anybody was parked behind that patch of junipers.”

  “Keep going, Cecil.”

  “I nosed my pickup out from behind the trees and watched her climb over the gate and beat feet to the wigwam burner. Then I took off for that AA meeting. Like a fool, I wanted Lynn to notice I’d made it there this time.”

  “Why should I believe all this, that you only killed the Rottweiler and not the Nodines too?”

  “Because all I wanted was revenge. Wanted them two to feel the same hurt I had over Billy.”

  “What proof did you have the twins killed your dog?”

  “I seen Dan do it with my own eyes.”

  If true, it was the most vicious accusation I’d ever heard concerning Dan Nodine.

  “Lynn said you came in late to the AA meeting.”

  He paused, put his hate-the-cops face back on. “Did the killer use a shotgun? ’Cause that’s the only weapon I own.”

  Somehow I could almost believe him. Cecil was sly, but it was hard to imagine he could make up a story like the one he’d just told me. Still, I’d be a fool to trust the man completely. Tears for his dead dog notwithstanding, there was every possibility he had a cache of assault weapons somewhere. Also nothing to say that he didn’t have a change of heart when he got back to his pickup and pulled out a Kel-Tec 9 semiautomatic pistol stashed under his seat, returned to the wigwam burner, and murdered the Nodines.

  “I could get a search warrant within the hour, verify t
he shotgun is the sum total of your arsenal.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  He clearly longed to add bitch to his dare. And just like that, we were back at a place of mutual animosity. I was certain we both preferred it that way.

  Someone knocked at the storage closet door. I stood and opened it.

  “Harry Bratton is on the phone,” Hollis whispered.

  “We’re done here,” I said. “Follow me, Cecil. Trooper Taylor will take it from here.”

  Cecil shuffled behind me, the two of us inhaling fresher air in phlegmy unison, and I motioned for him to sit in the chair across from Taylor.

  “Place Mr. Burney formally under arrest for withholding evidence in the Nodine murders. Also, cite him for first-degree animal abuse for shooting their dog.”

  Taylor finished writing down my directives. “My pleasure.”

  I knew withholding evidence in a homicide investigation was hard enough for Taylor to stomach, but Cecil’s killing the dog would bring out Taylor’s righteous anger.

  16

  Afternoon, February 27

  Harry Bratton had identified three distinct sets of fingerprints, none of which were in LEDS. His ballistics exam also determined that Larkin’s Kel-Tec PF-9 semiautomatic handgun was the weapon used in the Nodine murders.

  “No question about it,” he had said before ending the call.

  By the time I’d finished my discussion with Harry, Mark Taylor had put together Cecil Burney’s citation and arrest warrant. He’d also gotten my signatures and delivered the old drunk to the county jail.

  “I’m supposed to pass along a message to you, Maggie,” Taylor said.

  “Let me guess. ‘Go to hell.’”

  “No, he told me to tell you that it’s on you to get her back on the wagon. I asked who he meant, but he said you’d know.”

  “Thanks, Mark. Message received.” I turned to Hollis. “I want you to be in on this call with Bach.”

  As I dialed the number, he placed his laptop on the card table next to the speakerphone.

  “Homicide,” Al said, answering on the other end.

  “Afternoon. Maggie Blackthorne. Hollis Jones is on the line too. We want to fill you in on a couple of things, get some direction on how to proceed.”

  Bach shuffled papers in the background. “Is this about the forensic exam?”

  “Partly. Harry ID’d Larkin’s Kel-Tec PF-9 as the murder weapon and lifted three sets of prints, none of them in LEDS. And something else has come up. We have a witness—Cecil Burney, the owner of the Seneca gas station I talked to last Saturday. He claims to have seen Kat McKay enter the wigwam burner shortly before the Nodines were killed.”

  Hollis gave me a look. I hadn’t had an opportunity to tell him about Bratton’s phone call, the details of Cecil’s visit, or my latest chat with Ariel Pritchett.

  “How reliable is the witness?” the detective asked.

  “Generally speaking, not very. In fact, Trooper Taylor just checked him in at the county jail. I’ve charged him with withholding evidence and felony animal abuse. He shot the Nodines’ dog.”

  “Whoa,” Bach called out.

  “What the hell?” Hollis mouthed.

  “I believe we have to check out Burney’s story right away.” I reminded Bach that Kat McKay had been dating one of the Nodine twins up until a week before their murders. “I spoke to her last night, and she admitted borrowing Asa Larkin’s Kel-Tec PF-9 to target shoot. Claims she got it from his son, though. Says she’s never met Larkin.”

  “You found the weapon in the man’s vehicle yesterday, so she obviously returned it at some point.”

  “We need to figure out when,” I said.

  “Have you verified with Larkin that he lent her the pistol?” Al asked.

  “No, but he did tell us he usually stores it in a locked safe and that his son doesn’t know the combination, doesn’t even know a gun is kept there.”

  “Brady seems like an intelligent kid,” Hollis offered. “The kind who’s tenacious enough to figure out the combination to his father’s safe.”

  “Good point,” I said.

  “So we have other possibilities to explore when I see you later today,” Al said.

  “For one, Hollis figured out Frank Sylvester is Larkin’s biological father.”

  “Can’t wait to hear more. Right now, though, I’m late for a meeting. I do have one more question. Any progress on the Trudeau murder?”

  Oh, that. “Nothing more than what Jess Flynn told us about the altercation between Trudeau and Larkin over those steers.”

  After Bach signed off, Hollis and I remained in the alcove stewing in our own thoughts.

  “Cecil Burney. He’s something else,” Hollis said finally.

  “Crazy old bachelor. Practically lives in that trashy gas station of his.”

  “And Kat McKay. I’ve only spoken with her a few times, but she’s not really friendly, is she?”

  “No. And she could be lying about not knowing Larkin. Shortly after I left her house last night, I drove back by, and his black Prius was parked in her driveway.”

  “I hope you have more evidence than that if you’re ever called to testify,” Holly teased. “Besides, if the car is the only thing you saw, it could’ve been his kid hanging out with her son.”

  “What?” I was caught sideways for a moment, mostly because I’d stupidly not thought of that. I managed to come up with a retort anyway. “If you recall, he was in our office when Dad suspended his driving privileges.”

  Holly rolled his eyes. “What was the message all about, the one Mark delivered to you from Cecil?”

  Shit. I needed to take care of that. “Thanks for reminding me, Holly. Honestly, it’s a private matter. I’ll be back shortly”

  I stuffed the speakerphone back in its cubby, grabbed my coat and hat, and hurried out the door.

  I parked in front of the Castle Thrift Store. Lynn Nodine would no doubt reject any attempts by me to rescue her from hooch, and she’d definitely spurn that gaggle of church ladies swooping in. But Dorie was her friend, the one and only. More than that, Dorie was willing to put up with all of the drunken venom Lynn might spew and still be there when Lynn crawled up from the dark hole again. Dorie would save Lynn from herself. The same way she had saved me years before.

  Entering the store, I heard the usual electronic ting, a muffled chime alerting her to customers. I wiped my feet on her flower-print doormat and removed my police Stetson.

  Dorie stepped from her living quarters at the rear of the building. “Maggie. You don’t usually drop by in the middle of the day.”

  “I wanted you to know Lynn has started drinking hard again.”

  “You saw her?”

  “No. Somebody who cares about her enough to let me know.”

  “Cecil Burney?”

  “Doesn’t matter who, but I know if anyone can help her right now, it’s you.”

  “You’re right, it doesn’t matter who you heard it from. And thanks for coming to fetch me.” She gave me one of her sweet, God-loves-you hugs, collected her coat and purse, and hung the Closed sign in the front window.

  I followed her out and watched her drive away toward Lynn’s house in her rusted-out Toyota Corolla. I’d missed lunch earlier, so I charged up the stairs to my apartment, checked on Louie again, and heated and inhaled one of the last frozen entrées in my freezer.

  Before I finished quaffing a glass of water to wash it all down, Hollis rang. I swallowed and answered, “Just heading back.”

  “A Mr. Pete Trudeau is here to talk to you.”

  Guy Trudeau’s oldest son.

  “Christ on a crutch, they’re crawling out of the woodwork today.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re on your way.”

  Pete must have driven up from Medford to put his father’s affairs in order and make funeral arrangements. I hadn’t seen him since the summer before I started high school and he left for college. Quiet, serious, and hell-bent on g
etting as far away as he could from ranching life and his old man, so the gossip went.

  The dented Volvo parked outside the police station had to belong to Pete, the proper vehicle for a middle school math teacher. The man even looked like a middle school math teacher: gray face, eyes, and hair. He rose from the plastic deck chair in the front corner of our office, and we shook hands, his grip hardier than I would’ve expected.

  “My condolences,” I said.

  He nodded. “I haven’t been to Big T in years, Maggie. What the hell happened to the place? That beautiful old barn practically destroyed.”

  I refrained from suggesting he might know how the family ranch had fallen to rack and ruin if he’d bothered visiting his father a long time ago.

  “I hadn’t been to Big T in several years either before I drove out to speak to your dad this past Sunday. I’m not sure how long it’s been in the state it’s in.”

  “Can you tell me why you went to see him?”

  “He’d had some dealings with Dan and Joseph Nodine right before they were murdered. We wanted to question him about that.”

  “What? When did that happen?”

  “A week ago tomorrow.”

  “And you suspected Pop was involved?”

  “We planned to question him about a couple of things, but that’s pretty much all I can share with you at this point.”

  Pete shook his head. “He was a mean old bastard, but I don’t know about murder. Anyway, have you figured out who did kill the Nodines—or Pop, for that matter?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. We’re chasing every angle, though.”

  He didn’t appear convinced, and why should he? A nearly week-old double homicide followed by his father’s murder a few days later, and we had no solid leads on either.

  “I’m staying at the Best Western for a few days. I’m hoping to get things in order with his estate,” Pete said.

  “Do you plan on a memorial service?”