by Mike Markel
“Why not? You think you know everything about him?”
“Of course not. But I think I’ve seen enough to know that everything’s a transaction to Austin, and every transaction’s about sex. He might have had some kind of real feelings about that kid. He might even have had some real feelings about Suzannah. But he wasn’t the kind of guy who had an unrequited infatuation with a woman. If he was all dreamy about Suzannah and her sick kid, my money says he was fucking her, too.”
Ryan turned to me. “I’m not sure Larry Klein would say that adds up to probable cause.”
“I’m not talking about probable cause. I’m just saying, a guy like Austin needs the pussy. That’s what he does. It’s who he is.”
“I’m not there yet.”
“Okay, how about this? Did she answer my question about whether she was doing Austin?”
“You’re lucky she didn’t come after you with the fireplace poker.”
“All right, tell me what you know about her marriage to her husband.”
“I don’t know anything about her marriage.”
“Yes, you do. What did she say about him?”
“That he works at home. That he runs this environmental group.”
“What’s he look like?”
“I have no idea.”
“I do. He looks good. Didn’t she say she looks fifty-eight, and he looks younger than that?”
Ryan nodded his head. “That all the women who want to save the salmon want to sleep with him, something like that.”
“That’s right,” I said. “She said she couldn’t attract any man, let alone a young man. Put it together, Einstein.”
He looked at me. “She’s sexually insecure. A good-looking young guy comes along, shows some interest in her—or in her kid. However it develops, they end up in bed.”
“And once you put the two of them in the sack, there’s all kinds of reasons she might want to strangle him.”
“Just like the other women we’re looking at,” Ryan said.
“Until we come up with probable cause for arresting Tiffany Rhodes, Brian Hawser, May Eberlein, or Kathy Caravelli,” I said, “we need to look at Suzannah Montgomery.”
Ryan was silent. This time I think it meant he agreed with me.
Chapter 23
My fingers were curled around some heavy-duty chain-link fence topped with razor wire. On the other side of the fence was a long line of young guys, hundreds of them, all in orange jumpsuits, the line extending to the horizon. Their ankles were chained together so they were walking with tiny, shuffling steps. Their hands were chained together behind their backs, too, and each kid was attached to the kid in front of him by another chain around his waist. Officers in black uniforms wearing helmets with dark visors that hid their faces were hurrying the kids along, hitting the slow ones on their shoulders and backs and heads with nightsticks. The kids were being led onto a grey bus, dozens and dozens of them struggling up the steps into the door at the front.
Tommy was in chains, and as he walked past me, he glanced up for a second but didn’t react. I was crying, out of control, as I watched him in the procession of young guys, hundreds and hundreds of them awkwardly climbing up the steps into the grey bus.
Something pushed against my shoulder, rocking me back and forth. “Karen,” I heard a man’s voice over the clanking of the chains and the cries of the kids as the guards hit them with nightsticks. “Karen, it’s for you.”
I began to climb out of the dream. Mac had my cell in his hand. The pale green light from the screen gave his face a sickly glow as he handed me the phone. I looked at the fuzzy orange numbers on my clock radio. All I could make out was that the time started with a 2.
I cleared my throat. “Seagate,” I said.
“Seagate, this is Pelton.” Rob Pelton was one of the night-duty detectives. “Sorry to wake you.”
“That’s okay, what is it?”
“Your grad-student case. You’re looking at a co-ed, right? A girl named Tiffany Rhodes?”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“She’s in the ER.”
“Shit. What happened?”
“Looks like domestic violence. A uniform team was called to her apartment.”
I pulled my feet out from under the covers and planted them on the carpet. I rubbed my eyes. “All right, Rob, I’ll catch up with you at headquarters. Could you get the uniforms to meet me in fifteen at the ER?”
“Got it,” Pelton said.
“Thanks a lot.” I ended the call.
Mac said, “You need anything?”
“No, I gotta go out. Thanks.”
I got up and carried the phone with me into the bathroom and turned on the light. I speed-dialed Ryan. In a moment, his wife picked up. “Hey, Kali, Karen Seagate. Sorry to do this to you.”
Her voice was tiny and far away. “That’s okay.” I heard the phone being jostled.
“Yeah, Karen.” It was Ryan.
“Sorry, partner. Tiffany Rhodes is in the ER. I’m gonna head over. Just wanted to give you a head’s-up in case you want in. I can do it on my own.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll meet you there.”
Mac had turned on the light on the night table on my side of the bed. It was plenty for me to get dressed. He was lying on his side, his arm holding my pillow over the side of his head.
I was out the door in two minutes. The night was cold, black, and still. With no traffic, I made it to the hospital in eight minutes, then parked in the curved driveway leading up to the ER entrance, far enough away from the big glass doors that I wouldn’t block any ambulances coming in. As I was getting out of my Honda, I saw Ryan’s Mitsubishi pull in behind me.
He caught up with me as we tripped the big glass doors. He was wearing jeans and a nylon BYU windbreaker over a tee shirt; I’d never seen him wearing anything but a suit. “What do you know?”
“Just that the uniforms thought it was domestic violence.”
We walked past the four or five people scattered among the twenty or so blue plastic chairs. There was a homeless guy whose face was bruised and bleeding a little, a teenager with what looked like a dislocated shoulder, and a couple sets of young parents with little kids in pajamas blowing snot all over the place.
We walked over to the two uniforms standing near the desk.
“Detectives,” Wilson said, nodding to us. I knew Wilson, a big square-jawed guy with a jarhead cut. Next to him was a short Hispanic woman I’d never met. Her badge said Arroyo.
“Thanks for coming by,” I said to Wilson. “Brief us.”
He pulled a notebook from his back pocket. “We got the call from a neighbor at 1:47. Went over, knocked on the door. No answer. Forced the door open. Female Caucasian, eighteen to twenty, lying on the floor, unconscious, in front of a bookcase. Finger marks on her upper arms. Face bruised bad, like she’d been popped a couple of times. Pool of blood coming out of the back of her head, and she’d vomited. We called for a bus and notified Pelton and Malone. The paramedics were there in four minutes.”
“There was no guy in the apartment, right?”
“Yeah, we cleared the place. The drawers in the bedroom were open and empty, like the guy had thrown some stuff in a bag.”
“All right, Wilson, Arroyo, thanks.” The two uniforms turned and left.
“Ryan, I’d like you to meet up with Pelton and Malone. They’re probably still at the apartment or back at headquarters. I don’t know how the chief wants to play this—”
“You mean as a separate case or part of Austin Sulenka?”
“Yeah, but meet with the two detectives—you help them or they help you. Just make sure you get the specs on Brian’s car, put out an alert on it. Get his home address—he’s from Billings, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Contact MSP and Billings PD to try to run Brian down. I’ll stay here and figure out what’s going on with Tiffany. I’ll catch up with you back at headquarters, okay?”
&n
bsp; He nodded and headed out.
Pulling my shield out of my big leather bag and putting it around my neck, I walked over to the desk. “Rawlings PD,” I said. “Detective Seagate. You saw a college girl, Tiffany Rhodes, within the last half hour?”
The woman looked at her computer screen. “That’s right.” Her expression was somber. I couldn’t tell if that was because of what she was reading off the screen or what she did for a living. “I’ll call the attending. He’ll be out as soon as he can. Take a seat, please.”
“Thanks.” I walked over to a corner of the waiting room as far as I could get from the sick little buggers. I sat and waited. Except for the occasional whine and crying jag from one of the kids, the place was quiet. Scared, sad, and quiet.
I was zonked. I don’t sleep well anymore, and when I have to get up at two o’clock the adrenaline only lasts me an hour at most. Soon as I sit down, if the place is reasonably quiet, I can go out in a couple minutes. I glanced over at the food machines in the corner of the room. A four-year-old boy in Spiderman pajamas was germing up every surface he could reach. I waited for him to move on. A few second later, he was crawling on the floor, picking at something on the underside of one of the blue plastic chairs. I glanced at the adults in the waiting room. I figured it had to be a dad without a mom. There he was, over to the side, reading a magazine. He had long, stringy hair and a droopy mustache, a leather Harley vest with fringes over a sleeveless tee shirt. Not exactly a helicopter parent, but I guess he deserved some points for at least bringing the sick kid in.
I walked over to the machines, a dollar bill in my hand. I fed the bill in and, with my knuckles, pushed the buttons. I waited as the cup filled, then carefully lifted it out of the machine without touching any surfaces.
I burned my tongue on the coffee-colored battery acid, my mind fixed on whether I’d just gotten Tiffany hurt. It was Brian beat her up, no doubt about it. But what did she do to piss him off? It could’ve been nothing to do with the case. I’ve done enough domestics to know it doesn’t have to be anything real big. Half the time, it’s something that’s been brewing for days or weeks. The guy gets madder and madder and, since he’s likely to be the strong, stupid type, one day he explodes and beats the crap out of her. If she’s conscious, she tells me what she did wrong. She bought the wrong kind of ketchup, or she was talking too loud on the phone when he was trying to watch football, or he saw her smile when she ran into the guy from down the street, or some other deadly sin.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d done something that got Tiffany in trouble with Brian. The idiot already knew she had traded pussy for a grade with Austin, even though that hadn’t worked out quite right from her perspective. Nothing we’d done would’ve tipped Brian off she was still screwing Austin. We were careful to make sure we asked for her DNA along with Brian’s so it wouldn’t tip him off we already knew she was at Austin’s apartment. The little chat we had with her at the coffee shop shouldn’t have gotten her in trouble. Even if Brian knew about it, Tiffany could’ve said we just ran into her. I wasn’t seeing how we could’ve gotten her beat up, but my gut told me we had.
The metal swinging doors opened and a guy in scrubs came out. The front of his blue shirt was covered in blood, including the mask that dangled from his neck. He was tall and skinny, with thick brown hair and glasses. Even though he looked only thirty, I could see the wrinkles forming around his eyes.
He saw my shield and came walking over to me. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “David Tristan,” he said. “You’re here about Tiffany Rhodes?”
“Karen Seagate,” I said. “Yeah, what’ve you got on her?”
“It was domestic violence. Somebody punched her around. Grabbed her, shook her, then looks like he hit her in the face. Broke her cheekbone. She probably fell backward, hit her head on something.”
“How bad is she?”
“Fractured her skull, which ruptured the membrane and caused some bleeding. We did a CT on her, but she was swelling up pretty bad. We removed part of her skull and put in a drain. But the lesion was too far inside the brain. The neurosurgeon couldn’t control the bleeding.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we couldn’t save her.”
I got wobbly, then I heard the paper cup of coffee hit the floor. The room grew dark. Someone was grabbing my upper arms, leading me over to one of the plastic seats. In the distance, someone called out “Nurse.” Then I was gone for a while. I smelled some ammonia or something and came back. I recognized the nurse from behind the counter. She was holding smelling salts under my nose. Her face was in close to mine. She looked concerned.
She had a hand on my shoulder, supporting me. I saw the doc turn and start walking back toward the big swinging doors.
“Are you all right?” the nurse said to me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. Just give me a second.” I took a few deep breaths. I didn’t know why I was reacting like this. I didn’t even like Tiffany. “What’s your name?”
“Cynthia,” she said.
“Call the doc. Get him back here.” I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them again, the doc and the nurse were standing in front of me. I lifted myself up off the chair. Cynthia put out her arm to help support me. “Okay, listen, this is important. We know who attacked her. When we pick him up, we need him to think Tiffany’s alive. Do you understand me?”
I looked from the doc to the nurse. They both nodded.
“Doc, what can you say happened to her? A minor concussion?”
“Sure, a concussion and a bruise to her cheek. We’re holding her for observation because of the concussion.”
“Cynthia, can you make that happen? I mean, on the computer.”
“Of course,” she said. “What about notification of next of kin?”
“We’ll take care of that,” I said. “But it’s real important you work with me here on the concussion thing. The guy who did this we like for another murder, and I want to be able to work a deal with him on this domestic, okay?”
The doc said, “Whatever.” He turned and disappeared back through the swinging doors.
Cynthia said, “Are you okay to drive?”
That’s usually a good question, but not so much now I’m on the wagon. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks a lot.”
I walked out into the cold air, which helped me sharpen up a little. I got in my Honda and drove over to headquarters. I carded my way in the back door and checked in the detectives’ bullpen, but Ryan wasn’t there. Neither were Pelton and Malone. I decided to try the incident room.
Rob Pelton, Andy Malone, and Ryan were sitting at the big table.
“Hey, Karen,” Ryan said. The two other detectives acknowledged me, too.
“Catch me up,” I said.
“Rob and Andy secured the crime scene,” Ryan said. “Robin will head over to do the forensics when her shift starts.”
“Did you reach out to MSP and Billings PD?”
Rob Pelton said, “All that’s done, Karen. We got the guy’s ID off some stuff in the apartment. We got his vehicle specs, too.”
“Did you do a canvass?”
“Yeah, we did it,” Andy Malone said, stifling a yawn. “Only people we got anything from was the couple in the next apartment. They were the ones called it in. Indians or Paks or something. They didn’t really know Tiffany and Brian. Some shouting, furniture crashing, then silence. Called 911. They heard tires screeching a couple minutes later. That was it.”
“Did you contact the chief, Rob?”
“No, I decided to hold off till five. That’s when he wakes up anyway. There’s nothing he needs to do now. We’ve been looking for the guy’s car. Billings PD is looking at his parents’ house. We’ve got a unit parked near his apartment here in town in case he comes back for a toothbrush. Let the chief sleep.”
“Okay, you want to brief him when he gets in?”
“Sure,” Rob Pelton said. “Then he’ll decide whe
ther to wrap this in with your case or treat it as separate. Sound okay to you?”
I looked at Ryan. “Got any questions for them?”
“No,” Ryan said. “I’m good.”
“All right, Rob. Andy. Thanks a lot,” I said. The two night detectives stood up and headed out.
“You need me for anything?” I said to Ryan.
He shook his head. “You want to talk about how Brian decided to beat up Tiffany?”
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “How about we wait until the chief comes in?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said, and I turned to head off to the storage room, where we’ve got a couple of cots for cops who find themselves at headquarters during the wrong shift. “Were you able to talk to Tiffany?”
I felt the stinging in my eyes, and then the tears started. “I’m sorry, Ryan. Forgot to tell you. Tiffany’s dead. Brian killed her. Brian did, or we did.” I wiped at my eyes.
“Don’t do that, Karen,” he said. “We didn’t do it.”
“And how do you know that, Ryan? Tell me how the fuck you know that.” I was crying now, tears falling off my chin.
He turned his back to me and stood there, motionless.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked like that to you.” I touched his arm, but he didn’t move. I wiped some of the tears away with my knuckles. “I told the hospital to keep it quiet. In case Brian contacts them.” I turned and stumbled off to the storage room and the cot.
Chapter 24
I heard a door open, but since my dreams are so full of sounds and sights that don’t make any sense it didn’t seem unusual that in this particular dream I was stumbling across a high plain full of scrub brush, where there weren’t likely to be any doors.
“Karen, the chief’s ready to see us.” It was Ryan, his voice coming in small from the other side of the room. My eyes stung a little as I opened them and tried to focus. I couldn’t quite tell where I was. He hadn’t turned on the light in the storeroom, so all I saw was his big shape silhouetted in front of a rectangle of light from the hallway.
“Give me two minutes, okay?”
“I’ll be in his office.” When Ryan is pissed at me, he speaks in clipped phrases.
