Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For

by L. J. Sellers

  Schak was the only one in the meeting room when Jackson arrived. “Did you have a good Sunday?” Jackson asked as he sat down in one of the hard folding chairs.

  His partner scowled. “I spent the day trying to talk my son out of quitting his job and taking off to hike the Pacific Crest Trail for six months.”

  “Did you succeed?”

  “No.” Schak let out a big sigh. “Brad has such a great job for someone who’s twenty. I hate to see him give it up. When he gets back, he’ll have to start all over. And the economy is so bad.”

  “I didn’t know Brad was into hiking.”

  “It’s a new thing. The influence of a new friend.” Schak suddenly seemed a little embarrassed to be talking about his personal life. “Oh well, maybe he’ll change his mind.”

  They both looked up as Quince came in.

  “Sorry I’m late. I was out at the community college and everything took longer than it should have.”

  “No problem. We’re still waiting on Evans.”

  As Quince sat down, Evans rushed in. “Sorry I’m late. I made an arrest this morning and wasted the last hour at the jail.”

  “What happened?” Jackson’s brain scrambled to remember which suspects he’d given her to check out.

  “I went to see Jacob McFetter, from your new suspect list. I didn’t really expect to find him at home Monday morning, but there he was.” Evans took a moment to sit and put her shoulder bag on the floor. Jackson noticed that her hair was tousled. When she saw him looking at it, she said, “You should see the other guy.”

  It made them all chuckle. Evans continued her story. “So Jacob swings the door wide open and is standing there in his undies. And, as nice as he was to look at, what caught my eye was the pile of stolen goods stacked in the center of the room behind him. Stereos, purses, bike parts, shopping bags, even a 42-inch flat panel TV. So I told him he was under arrest. The little shit ran for the back door!” Evans shook her head in mock disgust. “How was he to know that I’m not only a sprinter but a hurdler too? I nailed him in the backyard, two feet outside the door.”

  Jackson visualized Evans leaping over the pile of stolen goods in a hurdler’s stretch. First the image amused him. Then it made him feel old. “That’s quite a morning’s work.”

  “No shit.” Schak gave Evans a fist bump.

  “Did you have a chance to question McFetter about our case?”

  “Actually, I did. On the ride to jail, I asked him where he was on February 13. Guess what?”

  “He was in jail,” Quince guessed.

  “Yep. So he didn’t kill Raina.” Evans turned to Jackson. “I called Lammers and she said she’d assign another detective to follow up on the stolen goods.”

  Jackson drew a line through Jacob McFetter’s name, then looked at Quince. “What did you find out at LCC?”

  Quince grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” He looked down at his notes. “Keesha Williams attended LCC in 2004 and 2005. She was in the dental hygienist program and had a total of eight teachers. Amy Hastings attended in 2006 for two terms and 2007 for one term. She took mostly writing classes and had seven teachers. Raina Hughes attended in 2007 and 2008 and took an assortment of transferable core classes. She had thirteen different teachers.” Quince looked up at Jackson. “They shared one, and only one, teacher. His name is Derrick Michelson and he no longer teaches there. He resigned last week after allegations surfaced that he’d had sex with a student. No one would tell me the student’s name because charges were never filed.”

  “Excellent work. Will you put all that on the board for us?” Jackson said. “Any chance you know where to locate Professor Michelson?”

  “I have an address.”

  “Great. As soon as this meeting is over, bring him in.” Jackson turned to Schak. “What have you got for us?”

  “I located and talked with both of the suspects you gave me. Sean Grimes moved to Portland three weeks ago and has been at work until 5 p.m. every day, including February 13. I verified that with his employer, so he’s not likely. Butch Seltzer is a possibility. He has a job and a girlfriend and is staying out of trouble, but his PO says he definitely has an attitude about homosexuals. I think he’s worth tailing.” Schak looked pleased with his morning’s work.

  “Great, let’s get Butch Seltzer on the board, and I’ll get you some help in keeping a 24/7 watch on him.” Jackson glanced at his notes. “I also have a round-the-clock watch on an apartment occupied by Ryan Bodehammer. He’s bipolar but off his meds, he’s angry at his stepmother, who may or may not be a lesbian, his father died a few months ago, and his PO described him as ‘spinning’. So finding Bodehammer is a priority.” Jackson looked at Evans. “I need to find his stepmother too. So far, I don’t know his father’s name.”

  “I’ll get on it.”

  “Right now, our number one suspect is the horny college professor. We know he had contact with all three victims.” Jackson paused. He wondered why Quince had not found the teacher when he investigated the second rape. Then he remembered that Quince, on his own, had tried and failed to get a subpoena for the college records. Shit! Raina might be dead because some misguided judge thought she was protecting students’ privacy.

  “Jackson?”

  He looked at Evans and grinned. “Just thinking.” He turned to Quince. “Did you talk to the college nurse about Raina’s Vicodin use?”

  “Apparently, Raina was hit by a car on her bicycle a few years ago. The nurse says Raina needed surgery to correct a shoulder problem but never got it because she didn’t have insurance. So Raina had chronic pain. The nurse noticed Raina’s Vicodin use was steadily increasing, so she put a limit on the prescription and referred Raina to a pain specialist. The nurse claims that the amount of Vicodin she prescribed could not have caused liver damage in the space of two and half years.”

  “She must have had another source. Did anyone find out anything from Raina’s friends about her Vicodin use?”

  Schak should his head, and Evans said, “No. She must have kept it a secret. Her grandmother couldn’t even name a doctor Raina had seen recently except at the health clinic at LCC.”

  “I still want to find out if she was buying it off the street, but that may be a dead end. She could have bought it online. So we’ll let that line of inquiry go for now. “ Jackson decided to wrap up the meeting. He wanted to get everyone back out there. The attacker probably had another victim lined up in his crosshairs. Jackson couldn’t bear the thought of looking at her dead body and knowing he had failed. “We have two, no three, solid suspects. Gorman is not off the hook yet. He may be a conspirator. Let’s find the other two and bring them in for questioning. Evans and I will locate and bring in Ryan Bodehammer. Quince will locate and bring in Derrick Michelson, and Schak will keep an eye on Seltzer. Stay in touch.”

  As the others filed out, Evans said, “I’ll be at my desk, digging through the database for Bodehammer’s parents.”

  Jackson nodded and headed down the hall to Sergeant Lammers’ office. He heard her voice from the hallway and knew she was in. She didn’t sound particularly happy. He waited for her to get off the phone, then knocked on her partially open door.

  “Come in.”

  Jackson stepped in and sat on the edge of the chair.

  “You’re here to tell me we can announce to the public that we’ve caught the rapist and/or murderer and everyone can sleep better knowing their tax dollars are working hard to benefit them.” Lammers gave him a mocking smile. Even seated, at six feet and two hundred pounds, she was intimidating. She hadn’t made it to her position without crushing a few people.

  “Almost. We have two new suspects. One is an ex-professor at LCC who had all three victims in his class at one point. He is also rumored to have had sex with a student and recently resigned from his position.”

  Lammers lifted an eyebrow. “So you’re working on the assumption that these cases are connected. Do you have trace evidence to support that yet?”
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  “Not yet. But all three victims are gay, and they all took a class from the same teacher at LCC.”

  “I like it. Who’s the other suspect?”

  “An ex-con with a history of victimizing ex-girlfriends. His name is Ryan Bodehammer and he’s currently off his bipolar medication and hasn’t checked in with his PO recently.”

  “What makes you think he might be raping and killing lesbians?”

  “Last time he was in jail he wrote letters to his ex-girlfriend, calling her a dyke and expressing hostility toward gay women. The sheriffs intercepted and read the letters and did not send them out.”

  “Not as interesting as the professor.” Lammers leaned forward and her voice took on an intensity that Jackson didn’t care for. “I need a case against one of these guys by the end of the week. The public funding vote is next Tuesday, and if we don’t get a bond passed, a lot of officers will lose their jobs. We need to look especially good to the public right now. And that is not easy to do with criminals being released from jail every day for lack of supervised space and with a rapist-murderer running free because we can’t catch him. We need this resolved, Jackson.”

  He stood. “I’ll do my best.”

  He strode back to his desk, irritation manifesting itself in every step. So now the department’s reputation and his fellow officers’ jobs were in his hands. As if he didn’t have enough pressure from the dead and the soon-to-be dead.

  Chapter 22

  Jamie lay on the narrow bed and wished Ryan would just kill her. Strangely, it pleased her that she would die in the same way as Raina, at the hands of the same crazy man. Waiting for it to happen was excruciating. Jamie rolled on her side, dragging the heavy chain with her. The pressure of the bed against her cheek hurt. By now almost every inch of her body hurt. The first time he had raped her, she’d fought hard, striking him with her fists and trying to twist away. A blow to her face had momentarily knocked her out. After that, Jamie lay still. What else could she do? She was chained to the wall and inside a small bedroom. He could do whatever he wanted and she was powerless to stop him.

  She had tried screaming for help when he first left her alone, but he had quickly come back in and tied a rag over her mouth. And left it on for hours. So now she stayed quiet. Jamie wondered what time it was. A heavy blanket covered the window, and it was hard to tell how much time had passed. She figured it had to be Monday by now.

  Who would know she was missing? Paul thought she had gone back to her parents, and her parents thought she was still at Paul’s.

  She heard the door open and her body tensed. Please, not again, she prayed to a God she wasn’t sure she still believed in.

  “Are you hungry?” he wanted to know.

  Jamie had not felt hungry since Raina was murdered. Her mother had forced a few peanut butter and honey sandwiches on her, but now she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Her stomach growled, surprising her. Jamie rolled over but didn’t look directly at him.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, lover.”

  “Good girl. I’m making scrambled eggs with diced ham. It was my dad’s favorite.”

  Jamie nodded. Fuck you and your dad, you piece of shit. May you die a slow and painful death of syphilis. Jamie was surprised by her unspoken rage.

  “Do you want ketchup?”

  Jamie shook her head.

  “Go wash up. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She swung her feet down to the wood floor and sat up. The blanket slipped, but she grabbed it and pulled it tight around her. As she moved toward the bathroom her breath came in little white puffs. The pungent smell of mold made her think the heat had been off for a while. Every step reminded her of his assaults. Was she bleeding internally?

  The bathroom was tiny but surprisingly clean. Jamie was grateful she didn’t have to pee in a can in the corner of the bedroom. She turned on the faucet and held a washrag under the cold water. There was no hot water and she tried to keep her hands, already half frozen, out of the cold water. She dabbed at the dried blood between her legs but the sting made her eyes water. Would the assaults become more bearable, she wondered? Or would he kill her first?

  Jamie opened the cabinet above the sink and inspected its contents. A toothbrush, toothpaste, a small bottle of hand lotion, and a small box of tampons. Her stomach tightened. How long did he plan on keeping her?

  She opened the small cupboard under the sink and found a can of Comet and a toilet plunger. Despair washed over her. She had hoped for a razor blade. Anything she could use to take her own life. Or his. Recently the news had carried stories of a woman in Austria who had been held captive in a basement for twenty-four years, giving birth to seven of her abductor’s children. Jamie would not let that happen to her. She would find a way to take her own life first. She examined the toilet plunger. If she pulled off the rubber thing, could the handle be useful?

  Jamie grew nervous about taking too long, so she shut off the water. She stepped out of the bathroom and wished, again, that she had dressed in something warmer than a cotton shirt yesterday. How could you know when you got dressed for the day that it might be the last clothes you ever put on? Raina hadn’t known. Jamie wondered what Raina wore the day she was killed. Jamie bet it was a green sweater. She was going to miss Raina’s funeral. Jamie fought back tears. She wouldn’t let the bastard see her cry.

  That afternoon, the city editor assigned Sophie to cover the city council’s decision to spend some of the transportation budget repaving main artery streets instead of fixing a million and one potholes. “A lot of people are outraged. See if you can tap into that and get some juicy quotes,” the editor said as she walked away.

  Potholes. Oh crap. This was not what Sophie wanted to write about. She called the mayor’s office and made an appointment for a telephone interview. Afterward, she spent a few minutes online looking at Michelle Peterson’s website. The design and structure were simple, with a link to a page providing information about Michelle’s poetry workshops. One, called Lesbian Love, was scheduled to start the next day and run for six consecutive Tuesdays. Excitement buzzed in her fingers as Sophie registered for the workshop. She would write off the $120 as an expense of her languishing freelance business. After paying with a credit card number, the site informed her she would receive an e-mail with the location and directions.

  Sophie killed a couple of minutes finding out when the city council was scheduled to meet again, then checked her Gmail account. The e-mail about the poetry workshop had come in and included not only Michelle’s address but a telephone number as well. Score! Sophie spent an hour reading the minutes of the last city council meeting but couldn’t concentrate and didn’t remember a damn thing when she was done. Boring, boring, boring. She suspected it was like that for most of the people who attended the meetings.

  At 4 p.m., still wound up with the possibility of breaking this case and story, she left the building and dialed the poet’s number as she headed for her car. Michelle didn’t pick up, so she left a message: “Hello, this is Sophie Speranza. I’m registered for your workshop tomorrow and I have a few questions I’d like to ask you beforehand. Please give me a call at 337-9821.”

  Sophie wondered if Michelle Peterson would recognize her name. If she was like most of the people in this town, Michelle probably didn’t even subscribe to the paper. As Sophie drove toward the campus area in search of the address on Alder Street, she planned what she would say and what she would do next.

  Chapter 23

  Jackson called Whitstone, who was still sitting in her car outside the apartment on Jefferson and 23rd. “Any sign of Bodehammer?”

  “None. Sorry. I think one of the houses on the other side of the alley is a drug hub though.”

  “Don’t be distracted by it. Has anyone gone up to Bodehammer’s door?”

  “No. Should I stay put?”

  “Yes.”

  Jackson was starting to think he was wasting
his time with Bodehammer, but he drove toward his residence anyway. At this point Derrick Michelson, the college professor, was a much more likely suspect because he had the same direct link to each of the victims. So far he had only linked Raina to Bodehammer and it was just a possible chance encounter. Jackson wished he were headed out to Michelson’s right now to interview him. Quince had tracked down the lead and this was his case as much as Jackson’s, so he resisted the urge to pull seniority and take over that line of inquiry.

  As he neared Lincoln Street, Jackson remembered that Loki lived around here somewhere. He pulled to the side of the street and scrolled through his phone contact list for the snitch’s number. Loki answered on the second ring.