“Let’s start looking anyway.”
Jackson appreciated her attitude, but couldn’t bring himself to answer. Instead, he called Schak. This time Schak picked up. “Hey, Jackson, what did you find out?”
“That Bodehammer likes to come up to Skinner’s Butte, which is where Evans and I are now. What’s the situation at the house on Pondview?”
“It looks like no one has been there for months. The gravel driveway has two-foot tall weeds, the house is completely dark, and the garage door has been boarded over.”
“Was there any way to get inside?”
“The front door was locked.”
“What about the back?”
A significant silence.
“I didn’t go around back.” Another silence. “Shit. I’m sorry. But you should see this place. No one has used that driveway in a long time.”
Jackson weighed the possibilities. Schak’s instincts were probably right, but a lot of properties had more than one entrance. His own backyard had a drive-through gate that opened into an alley. Schak had not even walked around to the back to check it out. “Where are you now?”
“I’m at headquarters.”
They were an equal distance away. “I’m going out to the house to look around some more. Why don’t you come up to the butte and help Evans?” Jackson clicked the phone shut. That kind of sloppiness was not like Schak. Still, Jackson was glad to get off the butte. He did not want to be the one to find Jamie’s body.
On the drive down the hill, he had to pull off to the side twice to let patrol cars by on their way up. Maybe he was wrong about Bodehammer being on the move. Maybe Evans would find him holed up in a makeshift camping space on the windless side of the hill. Jackson hoped like hell she did. This case had worn him down. He missed dinners with Katie and long talks with Kera. He also wanted to sleep—a long peaceful rest, knowing he had done his job and removed another threat to the public.
Jackson raced west out 6th Avenue, going around the infrequent traffic and ignoring the red lights. He willed his phone to ring, for dispatch to call him and report that a Washington state trooper had picked Bodehammer up just north of Seattle. Instead, as he crossed the railroad bridge where the road became Highway 99, he got a call that made his bowels churn.
“Detective Jackson here.”
“This is Daniel Kollmorgan, Kera’s husband. I think it’s time we talked.”
“Now is not a good time for me.”
“Let’s meet tomorrow for coffee. You name the time and place.”
“I can’t do that. I’m on a case and I don’t know when I’ll be available.”
Kollmorgan dropped his civil tone. “I’m disappointed that you’re avoiding this conversation. So I’ll make it brief. She is my wife. You can’t have her. Stop calling her and stay away from the house.” The phone clicked in his ear.
Oh shit. Jackson’s temples pounded. After abandoning Kera while she was grieving for her son, then sending her a ‘Dear John’ letter from Iraq, now the jerk wanted her back. The thought of losing Kera made his chest ache. Did he have the right to get in the way of their marriage? Kera had tried to file for divorce, but with Daniel in Iraq it had been impossible.
Jackson turned on Barger, a two-mile stretch of road that would lead him to Dakota, then Pondview. He struggled to push the Kera/Daniel dilemma out of his head. Damn cell phone. Most of the time, it made his job miraculously easier. At other times, it was a pain in the ass. He could not let himself think about Kera right now. She was too important and needed his full attention for any decision he would make about their relationship. He had to stay focused on the task at hand. A killer was still out there somewhere, maybe targeting his next victim.
Chapter 32
As Ted Conner drove along 6th, he automatically checked his fuel. Damn, he was almost empty. He pulled into the little gas station on the corner of Blair, a dumpy no-name place where the employees were only moments away from being just like the lowlife addicts and thieves who lived down the street. Normally, he would have never stopped at the station, but he was in a hurry.
“Put in a hundred dollars worth,” Conner told the attendant. Now that gas was so expensive, he was trying to make every hundred dollar fill-up last two weeks. His wife wanted him to sell the rig, but Conner wasn’t ready for that. As he waited, he thought about Jamie. When had Bodehammer taken her picture? Had the pervert seen Jamie that one time she came to the parole office? He had told her never to come there! Damn! Why didn’t that girl listen? One small mistake and she had probably paid for it with her life. One small mistake…
Conner realized he was rocking like a crazy person and tried to calm himself. There was no point in thinking about the past. He couldn’t change what Jamie had done. All he could do now was correct the future by taking Ryan Bodehammer out of it.
Conner paid for the gas with a credit card and headed toward Dakota Street. He realized there was a good chance Bodehammer was long gone. Rapists often moved from town to town to keep from getting identified and caught. Bodehammer wasn’t very bright, Conner reminded himself. He also lacked self-control, so he would get picked up eventually. Conner remembered the day in his office when Bodehammer had seen the newspaper story on his desk and said, “Damn dykes got what they deserved.”
That had been a reckless comment, even if true.
Had Jackson found Bodehammer already?
Conner prayed he hadn’t. If Bodehammer had hurt Jamie, Conner wanted to deliver the justice.
Ryan was tempted to use the front entrance to the house because it no longer mattered what the neighbors thought. He would be out of town before the old lady across the street figured out he was there. He knew his ex-stepmother had asked the old lady to spy on the place and call her if he showed up. Michelle, the cunt, was like that. Out of caution and habit, Ryan drove into the church parking lot and parked in his spot in the corner.
He jogged down the alley and through the gate into the backyard. Was this the last time he would ever come to this house? The thought made him pause. If he was never coming back, he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave the place for Michelle the rug-muncher. He would set the place on fire on his way out and burn it to the ground. Ryan slowed his pace as he crossed the yard, remembering all the times he’d come in this way in high school. The light in the back bedroom gave him a warm feeling. Someone was home and waiting for him. After three seconds of jiggling the handle, the sliding door opened and Ryan stepped into the dining room.
He hurried through the darkness, knowing where every piece of furniture and every sharp corner was located. In the hallway, he hesitated, searching deep inside himself for the strength to go through with his plan to strangle Jamie. He had never done anything quite like it before. He had thought it might be exhilarating, but now he wasn’t so sure. It would be easier just to set the house on fire and walk away, leaving Jamie to burn. But he couldn’t do that. His father was suddenly there in the hallway, shaking his head and telling him to suck it up and not be such a baby. Ryan flipped on the light for a second to chase away his father’s ghost, then willed himself to move forward.
He grabbed the door handle, swallowed hard, and stepped into the bedroom.
Before he could register that Jamie was not on the bed, there was a quick movement from the left. His head exploded in pain as a long piece of metal struck him above the ear. Stunned and temporarily blinded, Ryan struggled to stay on his feet. What had happened? Had Jamie hit him?
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her off to the side, a blurred shape that was somehow threatening. The pain eased slightly and his sight came back into focus. Ryan stepped forward, thinking he needed to sit down. He saw Jamie raise the bar.
“Wait.” He meant to yell, but it came out a whimper. He staggered over to the bed and sat. She would pay for this, but he needed a moment to recover his strength. Where had the metal bar come from?
“Where’s the key to this lock?” she yelled.
The l
oudness of her voice startled him. She had been so quiet, so passive before now. Ryan drew strength from her fighting tone.
“You won’t need it, you little bitch.” Ryan stood and lunged for the bar. She stepped sideways and he missed his target, grabbing only the very end. He pulled her toward him. She pulled back, and they struggled for possession of the only weapon at hand.
Suddenly, she stopped pulling and Ryan fell backward, slamming his tailbone the floor. Now his ass ached as much as his head. “Give it up, you little dyke, or I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Go ahead. Kill me the way you killed Raina.” Jamie’s eyes blazed in a fury he hadn’t known she was capable of. “I’d rather die than live without her anyway. I’d rather die than let you touch me again.”
What the fuck was she talking about? Who was Raina? The girl Jamie had kissed in the park? Out loud, Ryan said, “Who’s Raina?”
“My girlfriend. You raped and killed her and left her in the back of her car like a bag of trash.” Jamie moved toward him, the metal rod raised above her head.
Ryan desperately wanted to grab the bar and beat her with it for causing him this much pain, but at the moment, she had the advantage. He was still sprawled on the floor. He had to engage her long enough to get up and get control. “I’ve never killed anyone. I fucked a couple of dykes, maybe roughed ‘em up a little, but they both walked away from it. Or I should say, they limped.” Ryan pushed to his feet as he talked.
“Liar!”
Ryan laughed. She was acting so brave for such a tiny thing. Still, she was going to die. He would fuck her first, no matter how much his head hurt. “Really, Jamie, you’ll be the first woman I ever killed. Although I fantasized about killing my stepmother many times.”
She looked so confused, Ryan made his move and lunged for the bar again. This time he got both hands around it and yanked the rod away from her. He tossed it into the hallway and said, “So you are a dyke after all. I should have known by the way you just lay there while we were having sex. That makes killing you so much easier.”
He stepped forward, grabbed Jamie by her blond hair, and slammed her head into the wall. She whimpered but did not go down. Ryan dug in his pocket for the key. Time to get this damn chain out of his way.
Jamie struggled to stay conscious; the searing pain in her head was unbearable. She had no real hope of surviving this encounter—she’d known that from the moment she entered this room—yet she still wanted to live. She wanted to know what had happened to Raina. Ryan had calmly denied killing her. Why would he easily admit to rape and not murder? Especially since he planned to kill her anyway? Jamie’s brain scrambled to make sense of it. “So who killed Raina?” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Ryan had a grip on her hair and his face was only inches away as he unlocked the chain at her waist. Her body tensed at the memory of what that meant.
“Maybe your prick of a father killed your girlfriend. He hates dykes as much as I do.” Ryan laughed again. “You should have heard what he had to say about that cunt Michelle when I told him she left my dad for a dyke.”
Jamie was too stunned to think or speak. Her father? Kill Raina? That was crazy.
Ryan grabbed her by both shoulders and pushed her toward the bed. Jamie tried to jerk free, but his grip tightened. Without the metal bar, she had no chance. She was about to be raped again, but all she could she think was: Did her dad know Raina was gay? Did he know that she was gay?
As Ryan ripped at her pants, Jamie tried to process the unthinkable. Was her father capable of murder? Would he kill Raina to keep her away from his daughter? Oh dear God. All the time and energy her parents had spent encouraging her to leave Eugene. To get away from Raina. Had they known all along how she and Raina felt about each other? Did her dad think he could stop her from being gay by getting rid of her lover? Jamie didn’t believe it.
In a sudden move she hadn’t known she was going to make, Jamie lifted her shoulders off the bed and slammed her forehead into Ryan’s nose. He howled in pain and let go of her pants long enough to reach for his face. She struggled to slide out from under him.
“Fucking cunt!” He grabbed her hair and slammed her onto to the bed with the weight of his body. Blood dripped from his face to hers.
Conner’s heart sank when he saw the small rundown house. Clearly no one had come here in ages. Ryan Bodehammer was on the run. Conner pulled into the driveway to turn around, then stopped and shut off the engine. He needed a moment to collect his scattered thoughts. His mind had been racing for nearly a week now. Actually, it had been spinning since the day in his office when Bodehammer looked at the newspaper on the desk and muttered, “Damn dykes got what they deserved.”
Conner had glanced at the paper, which had the City section on top. The lead story was about some baby who needed heart surgery, but underneath was a brief report about a second rape police thought had been committed by the same man.
“You mean the rape victims?” Conner had asked, his mind on something else.
Bodehammer suddenly looked flustered. “No. I’m just still mad at that cunt dyke stepmother of mine. She won’t let me move into my dad’s house.”
“So you’re still at your apartment on Jefferson?”
“Yeah.”
“Still working at the Goodwill?”
“Yep.” Bodehammer’s leg bounced nervously.
Conner printed out the standard form with Bodehammer’s next appointment and handed it to him. His parolee looked anxious to leave. After Bodehammer hurried out, Conner looked at the newspaper story again. There was no mention the women were homosexuals. Nor had he heard any buzz like that in the sheriffs’ office. Suddenly it hit him. Bodehammer had committed the rapes. Bodehammer knew the women were dykes because he had raped them. He had raped them because they were dykes.
Conner had reached for his desk phone, started to call police headquarters, then stopped. He didn’t know Bodehammer was guilty for sure. He stared across the desk at the chair his parolee had sat in and tried to decide how to handle the situation. He noticed blond hairs clinging to the chair’s padding. Conner wondered if Bodehammer had left hair or semen on his victims. He pulled tweezers and a plastic bag, normally used for urine sample bottles, out of a bottom drawer. Conner walked around to the chair and carefully deposited several of the hairs into the plastic bag. If Bodehammer were guilty, a DNA comparison would convict him. In fact, Conner speculated, with this physical evidence he could frame his parolee for just about any crime. Or blackmail him for favors. Conner toyed with how to make this situation work for him.
An idea came to him. He could get that fucking dyke Raina out of Jamie’s life for good and give his daughter a chance to be normal. At the same time, he could plant a single hair at the scene and pin her death on a crazy scumbag who was raping lesbos and needed to be locked up anyway.
The plan was brilliant, but so troubling that Conner rejected it immediately. He could never go through with it. As a marine, he had killed in the name of his country. He knew he could kill someone in defense of his family without a moment’s hesitation, but murder Raina in cold blood? The outcome appealed to him, but the act was too repulsive. Conner put the baggie with the blond hairs into his briefcase and decided to mull it around for a day or so.
The next day he saw Raina kissing and groping his innocent daughter, right there on his own doorstep. That had sealed Raina’s fate. He could not—as a God-fearing duty-bound father—allow Raina to lead Jamie into that degenerate and despised lifestyle. He could not let Raina steal his daughter’s future. From that moment, Raina had ceased to be a person. She was the enemy and he intended to destroy her.
Conner sat in his truck remembering that dreadful night. He had followed Raina out to the property on Pine Grove and parked in the trees to wait for her. Shooting out her tire had been easy. Bashing her head into the side of the car had taken more resolve. The final blow with the flashlight had been an act of mercy. The simulated rape on her corpse had repulsed
him, and Conner wondered if God would forgive him.
Now Jamie was missing and Conner wondered if God was punishing him. He prayed for Jamie to be safe, but the prayer gave him little comfort. Conner stared at the dark abandoned house and tried to convince himself that Bodehammer had left town days ago. That his lovely Jamie was just off grieving somewhere and ignoring her parents. She would call him any minute and say she was on her way home. Conner’s cell phone was in his lap, and he subconsciously reached down to touch it. For now, all he could do was wait.
A glimmer of light flickered from behind the heavy front curtain. It came and went so quickly, he thought he had imagined it. He grabbed his Sig Sauer, climbed out of the truck, and hurried toward the front door. No harm in checking. As he neared the small front patio, Conner heard muffled thumping sounds coming from the back of the house. Someone was in there! It sounded like a struggle. He rushed to the front door and twisted the knob. Locked!
Conner ran back to his truck and grabbed a crow bar from under the seat. In five short seconds, he was back at the front door. He jammed the flat end of the bar into the small space between the retractable lock and the frame. One good hard shove and the lock popped, sending the door flying open. Conner ran through the front hallway, listening for the location of the sounds. He heard a loud thud from the left, then a woman’s voice cried out.
Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For Page 25
