The Commission
The Commission
Michael Norman
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2007 by Michael Norman
First U. S. Edition 2007
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006929248
ISBN-10: 1-59058-358-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-358-6 Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-61595-142-0 Epub
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
www.poisonedpenpress.com
[email protected]
Dedication
Dedicated in loving memory to the real Aunt June.
See you on the other side.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
More from this Author
Contact Us
Acknowledgments
Former First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton once said that it takes a village to raise a child. I’ve discovered, as a first author, that it also takes a village to write a book. With that in mind, many thanks to the people who have contributed to the creation of this book.
First, to several of my mystery reading friends, who made suggestions on earlier drafts of the manuscript, you have my heart-felt thanks. These include Bill Geisdorf, Park City, Utah, as well as Robert and Sandy DuPont and Lois Langdon, Salt Lake City, Utah. I would like to extend a special thanks to my good friend, Eileen Land, Columbus, New Jersey, who spent countless hours reading and critiquing multiple drafts of the manuscript.
Thanks to everyone at the Poisoned Pen Press whose hard work made publication of the book possible including Publisher, Robert Rosenwald, and Associate Publisher, Jessica Tribble. Thanks also to Monty Montee who became my e-mail pen pal during the arduous review process. And finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Editor-in-Chief, Barbara Peters, for cracking the whip and sticking with me until I got it right.
I am indebted to the late Marilyn Wallace for her kind words of encouragement and for pointing me in the right direction—a gift that she shared with many writers.
Finally, I am grateful to my best friend and life partner, Diane Brewster-Norman. The book would never have been finished without your tireless labor, encouragement, wisdom, and gentle prodding.
Epigraph
“Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.”
—Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince
Prologue
He had been seeing the young prostitute for almost a year now. They had met at the Satin & Lace club in South Salt Lake City where she worked as a nude dancer. They’d hit it off right away. He found her youthful good looks, hard body, and sexual enthusiasm intoxicating from the very beginning. They got together as often as his professional schedule and family demands would allow.
He got up and began to dress. She stirred briefly, rolled over, and went back to sleep. It was almost 11 p.m. He wanted to get home soon in case his wife tried to call him from her parents’ home in California where she was visiting. He deposited a crisp, new one-hundred-dollar bill on the night stand, kissed her gently on the back of the neck, and quietly left the room.
A six-foot-high cedar fence separated the motel parking lot from a McDonald’s restaurant. The familiar smell of fast-food burgers and fries filled the still night air. He climbed into his new Lexus, turned north onto State Street, and headed home into the exclusive Avenues district. For a Saturday night, south State Street was relatively free of the usual transients and hookers who often plied their trade in this part of town. The amount of lust on south State Street would have made old Brigham Young turn over in his grave—clearly not what he intended when the streets of this dusty frontier town were neatly laid out one hundred and fifty years earlier.
Levi Vogue paused to reflect on what a charmed life he was leading. At forty-four, he’d recently been appointed by Governor Nelson Strand to a second five-year term as Chairman of the prestigious and highly visible Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Having established a statewide reputation for being tough on crime and criminals, his political ambition extended far beyond the Board. He was a member of a prominent and wealthy Republican family. He had two grown sons attending college. And he had a supportive, if boring wife, who was the epitome of what former Vice-President Dan Quayle meant when he stumped around the country preaching family values.
***
This growing obsession he had for the young prostitute—he knew he needed to end it and end it soon. His occasional stops at the Satin & Lace club were also a problem. It would be just his luck to run into some former prison inmate he had paroled who might remember him. Or worse, what if he ran into some prominent member of the community dallying in the den of iniquity? It was just the type of potential scandal that could jeopardize his position on the Board of Pardons, not to mention ending any hope of a future political career. Besides, she sporadically dated a possessive, jealous boyfriend who had a reputation for dealing violently with strip-club customers who tried to become overly familiar with her. Who knows what he might do if he became aware of their occasional trysts at the Starlite Motel.
He was living on the edge, and he knew it. But, he liked living on the edge.
He glanced quickly at his watch, noting that it was almost 11:30 as he entered the circular driveway that led to the stately, older Victorian home he and Margaret had purchased five years earlier. As he frequently did during the warm spring and summer months, he parked in the driveway near the garage. As he climbed out, he failed to notice the approaching figure who emerged from the shadows next to the house. When he glanced up, he thought the figure looked vaguely familiar, but wondered why anyone would be wearing a long trench coat on a warm spring night.
The advancing figure stopped less than twenty feet from
him. For an instant, each looked at the other without speaking. Only when the sawed-off shotgun emerged from under the coat did he realize what was about to happen. He wanted to scream, “No,” but before he could say anything, he saw a bright flash of light and heard an explosion as the shotgun discharged. The deafening blast caught him high in the chest and propelled him onto his back. He felt the warm dampness of his own blood as it puddled under him on the cobblestone drive. A strange numbness followed. He looked up at the stars in a hazy state of disbelief as the dark figure crouched over him. The last thing he felt was the cold touch of the shotgun barrel as it was placed under his chin. The second blast nearly decapitated him.
Chapter One
The telephone woke me from a restless sleep. I glanced at the clock across the room with its small red numbers and strained through bleary eyes to make out the time. I’d been telling myself for months to move the clock closer to the bed or buy another one with bigger numbers. Wearily, I picked up the phone.
“Yeah.”
“Sam, this is Norm Sloan. Sorry about the hour, but we’ve got a major problem.”
I became instantly alert. Rarely did I receive a telephone call in the middle of the night from the Executive Director of the Utah Department of Corrections. Calls like this always meant that something had gone seriously wrong somewhere, usually at the state prison. As the head of the Special Investigations Branch (SIB) of the Utah Department of Corrections, problems with inmates or prison employees usually ended up on my desk.
“What’s happened?”
“I just received a call from the governor. Levi Vogue has been gunned down in the driveway of his home. The preliminary examination of the crime scene appears to suggest an execution-style hit.”
“Oh, shit. Is he alive?”
“No. They pronounced him dead at the scene.”
“What about his family?”
“Out of town from what I was told.”
“Do you know if the governor is planning to involve the state attorney general’s office in the investigation?” I asked.
“The governor didn’t say anything about it. As far as I can tell, this one’s strictly in the hands of Salt Lake City P.D. and the county prosecutor.”
“Who’s been assigned as lead investigator?”
“They’ve given it to that hot-shot female homicide detective—you know, the one who gets more publicity than the Pope.”
“That would be Kate McConnell,” I said. “They couldn’t have made a better choice. She’s as talented as they come.”
“That’s her,” said Sloan. “Look, Sam, I’m assigning you as my personal liaison to Salt Lake P.D. Do everything you can to help them get it solved quickly. And Sam, don’t delegate this to anyone else. Nobody knows our prison and parole populations better than you. Let’s just hope the perp turns out to be some asshole not connected to our offender population.
“In a worst-case scenario, if the offender turns out to be one of ours, the politicians will do what they always do—look for scapegoats. It’s probably occurred to you that in the assignment of blame, you will be perceived by some as culpable. It’s your office that serves as the intelligence gathering unit for the department. There are those on the governor’s staff, and in the state legislature, who will ask how an incident like this could have gone undetected. I’ll expect you to provide daily briefings either to me or my administrative assistant, Brad Ford. Get on it, Sam, and good hunting.”
Sloan was a survivor. He started at the Utah State Prison thirty-two years ago as a clinical social worker and clawed his way up the ranks to the top. The governor appointed him as executive director five years ago.
He and I have bumped heads more than once. My dislike of authority, chains of command, and political maneuvering have often gotten me into hot water. Fortunately, I’m very good at what I do, and that keeps me employed and him out of trouble.
Sloan had made no secret of his worry that the killer might be one of our ex-cons with a score to settle. Damage control would be at the top of his agenda. While I wanted to give Sloan the benefit of the doubt, the tenor of his message wasn’t lost on me. If the killer of Levi Vogue turned out to be an ex-con, I would make a tempting sacrificial lamb for the political bureaucrats. I wondered if Sloan might become one of those bureaucrats.
I scratched a note on the kitchen chalkboard to Aunt June explaining that I’d been called out on a case and would phone her later in the morning. As the single parent of an eight-year-old, I don’t know how Sara and I would have made it without her. After my divorce, she moved in to assist with my transition into single parenthood. That was almost two years ago. She has since become an indispensable part of our lives. I looked in on Sara, and then quickly left the house.
I live in the resort town of Park City, not far from the base of the ski mountain. It’s not exactly convenient to working at the Utah State Prison, but a great place to live if you can tolerate the thirty-plus-mile commute.
As I crested Parley’s Summit and began the descent into Salt Lake City, a scary thought occurred to me. Rather than an isolated attack, what if the murder of Levi Vogue was part of a broader conspiracy to kill all of the parole board members? The lives of the other board members could be in imminent danger. An unlikely scenario? Yes. Something I could afford to ignore? Definitely not.
I reached for my cell phone and dialed Salt Lake P.D. dispatch. I was connected to the dispatch duty sergeant.
“Sergeant Malone; how can I help you?”
“Sergeant Malone, this is Sam Kincaid from the Special Investigations Branch of the Utah Department of Corrections. I’m on my way to assist your homicide unit at the home of Levi Vogue and I need your help with something.”
“What can I do for you?”
“We’ve got two parole board members who live in the city and two who reside in Salt Lake county. If I get you their names and addresses, could you have patrol officers contact them and make sure that everybody is okay?”
“Not a problem—be glad to do it. We’ll contact the ones in our jurisdiction and I’ll have the sheriff’s office send deputies to the homes of the two who reside in the county. Anything else?”
“Yeah, there is one more thing. Do you think you could arrange special patrol coverage of their homes for the remainder of the night?”
“Not a problem.”
Chapter Two
Death investigations were nothing new for me. My 17 years working inside the prison system for the Special Investigations Branch brought me into close contact with death and serious bodily injury all too frequently. Prisons were like that, and the Utah State Prison was no exception.
I was not surprised by the pandemonium when I arrived at Vogue’s home. The red and blue emergency lights from police and fire units were visible from two blocks away. Neighbors and curious onlookers had gathered behind police barricades across the street from the victim’s home. The area had been cordoned off with yellow tape reading “Crime Scene—Do Not Enter.” Members of the press scurried about everywhere attempting to gather whatever information became available. A helicopter from one of the local news stations hovered overhead.
As I approached the crime scene, Fred Saunders, an experienced investigative reporter with the Salt Lake Tribune, spotted me. “Kincaid, is your presence here an indication that Mr. Vogue’s murder was likely committed by a former inmate at the prison?”
“Hello, Fred. No, it isn’t. It’s much too early to speculate on anything like that. I’m here as a liaison from Corrections to assist Salt Lake P.D. in any way we can.”
“Who asked you to assist Salt Lake P.D. in the investigation?”
“No comment,” I replied as I pushed past him toward the entrance to the crime scene.
I showed my ID to a young patrol officer whose primary responsibility was to control access by logging people in and out. I was immediately escorted to Salt Lake P.D. Homicide Detective Lieutenant Kathryn McConnell. I’d known her casually for several years.
Our paths had crossed on numerous occasions at meetings and professional training conferences.
Attractive in an athletic sort of way, McConnell was tall and slender with a body that was muscular and well defined. She had chestnut colored hair with large hazel eyes, a small nose, full lips, and the kind of fair complexion that probably couldn’t tolerate much sun.
She was the kind of woman any healthy, red-blooded male would want to take a tumble with, yet she always seemed to display an aura that suggested you wouldn’t make it to first base, much less hit a home run.
My cursory look around the crime scene told me that things were well under way. One lab technician was measuring, diagraming, and photographing the scene. Another was busy videotaping the entire area. A third, assisted by two uniforms, was conducting a grid search of the property.
As I approached, McConnell broke away from a conversation with a well-dressed young detective, probably her partner. She extended a long, slender hand and said, “Hi, Sam. Sorry about the circumstances, but it’s nice to see you again.”
“Thanks, Kate. Nice to see you, too. What have you got so far?”
“Not much. Two neighbors called it in almost simultaneously. The shots apparently rocked the whole neighborhood. The perp also burglarized the residence. We don’t know if it was a planned, professional hit, or whether Vogue got home at the wrong time and blundered into an in-progress burglary.
“Two uniforms arrived at about the same time, took one look at the victim, and knew there was nothing they could do for him. They secured the area and called for help. Once backup arrived, they found the point of entry and conducted a room-by-room search of the house. By that time, the perp was long gone. Fortunately, nobody was home. A neighbor told us that Mrs. Vogue is away visiting her parents in California, and apparently, both sons attend college someplace out of state. As you’ll see when we go in, the interior of the place was badly trashed. We’ll have to wait until Mrs. Vogue returns to find out what, if anything, was stolen.”
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