Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4)

by Debra Gaskill

  “So how long has this been going on?”

  “About a month—and I tell you, I’m getting darned sick and tired of the lack of response I get from that new sheriff. Raise my taxes to buy new dispatch equipment and then don’t even come out to my house when I call 911? Have you looked into whether they spent that money like they said they did? I’ll bet you that my tax dollars aren’t going where the county said they would.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, sir. I did a story on the new dispatch equipment about a month back.” I tried to steer the conversation back to what was going on in the barn. “So what kind of things do you hear over at the barn?”

  “Loud music, and talking. Somebody’s always talking.”

  “Like on a microphone?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe so. I take my hearing aids out before I go to bed, so I can’t always understand what they’re saying.”

  “Do you get the impression that it’s a group meeting of any kind? Or just a loud party?”

  “I get the impression that somebody’s trying to keep me from getting a good night’s sleep!” he snapped.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to leave my car here and walk over there to see what’s going on.”

  “Fine with me. Maybe you can get them to quiet it down a little before things get out of control.”

  I left Spotts sitting on his front porch and slipped into the woods.

  Chapter 32 Addison

  A phone call from Dr. Bovir woke me at just about one-thirty.

  “What’s up?” I asked, pulling a pair of jeans from the bedroom floor and stepping into them. I balanced the phone between my cheek and my shoulder as I dressed.

  “I need you to come down to the morgue,” said Dr. Bovir in his Pakistani accent.

  “You can’t tell me why?”

  “Just come down, please.” And he hung up.

  Duncan barely grunted his acknowledgement as I left for yet another story in the middle of the night. It would be his responsibility —for the second day in a row—to get the Holsteins milked if I weren’t back in time.

  About twenty minutes later, I was leaning against the fender of my old blue Taurus, finishing a cigarette.

  Wonder what this is about? I wish Graham Kinnon were here. This shit always happens when I’m short-staffed.

  I ground my cigarette into the sidewalk in front of the emergency room before I stepped between the automatic double sliding doors. This early in the morning, the main doors had long been closed and all traffic had to come in through the ER.

  I looked around the emergency waiting room, quiet at this time of the morning. A couple of patients were waiting to see the doctor. A man, his workingman’s clothes dirty and his face bruised, probably from a late night bar fight, held an ice bag against his jaw. A drop of blood congealed in the beginnings of a day’s growth of beard below his nose.

  Across the room, a mother, dressed in jeans, sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers bounced a crying baby on her lap, a panicked look on her face. In the corner, an elderly man sat reading a year-old issue of Golf magazine. A worn woman’s coat and scuffed purse lay in the chair next to him.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Bovir,” I said to the nurse behind the desk, showing my press pass.

  Like a lot of small town coroner’s offices, Bovir’s was in the basement of Plummer County Community Hospital, just south of Jubilant Falls’ downtown.

  The nurse picked up the phone and punched in the morgue’s extension on the keypad.

  “He told me you’d be here,” she said. She was silent for a moment. “Dr. Bovir? Yes, she’s here. I’ll send her down.”

  The nurse hung up the phone and pointed toward the hallway. “Just go down there, toward the elevator. The morgue is—”

  “I know.” I cut in. “I can find it. Thanks for your help.”

  My dirty white athletic shoes squeaked as I walked down the hallway, echoing off the empty walls. I stopped at the end of the hall and pushed the button to call the elevator. The soft ding of the approaching car echoed through the hall. I stepped inside and punched the glowing white ‘B’ button.

  Dr. Bovir was waiting for me when the elevator doors opened in the basement. “Thanks for coming this late at night, Mrs. McIntyre,” the coroner said, bowing slightly.

  “No big deal. What’s going on?” I pulled my reporter’s notebook and a pen from my purse, uncapping the pen with my teeth.

  “We need you to identify a body.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “The cops usually do this with a photo and the next of kin downtown. What’s the deal that you need me, of all people, to come into the morgue to do the ID?”

  Bovir didn’t answer, but simply took my elbow and led me into the morgue.

  Inside, Robert Peppin stood next to the steel autopsy table beside a wall of individually refrigerated drawers for corpses, his arms folded and his foot tapping.

  His eyes hardened as I came into the room.

  I didn’t speak; I just nodded sharply in Peppin’s direction.

  Bovir lead me toward one of the steel examining tables in the center of the room, where a body lay covered in a sheet.

  “Can you identify this person?” He folded the sheet down to the body’s shoulders.

  I gasped.

  The woman lying on the slab had bullet wounds to her left eye and cheekbone. Her matted black hair fell around her naked shoulders and around her face. The back of her head, which rested on a metal headrest, was a mass of congealed blood, brains and hair where the bullets had exited.

  I grasped the side of the steel slab for balance and closed my eyes to block out the horror as vomit rose in my throat. After a moment of silence, I let out a long sigh.

  “Oh, Katya Bolodenka,” I said softly. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “You ought to be,” Peppin said. “Ekaterina Bolodenka was the sole witness who was going to put Kolya Dyakonov away for a long time. Now, with no witness, we have no case, thanks to you.”

  “You listen to me, Peppin, and you listen to me good.” I poked a finger into the agent’s chest. “I’m not responsible for the death of Katya Bolodenka—or whatever goddamned name you’ve given her. Blame me all you want, but I didn’t kill her. I just did my job. Your agency had a witness who couldn’t play by the rules, protected by a man who couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. Don’t you think the fact they were sleeping together compromised her situation a little bit? I’d say it was your agency and your marshal who failed Katya, not me.”

  “Please, Mrs. McIntyre, Agent Peppin—” Bucky Bovir stepped between us.

  “I’m not done,” I said, pushing him aside. “Somebody trashed that farmhouse—I was there this afternoon.”

  “What?” Peppin stepped back.

  “That’s what I said. Where did you find her body? Because there’s no evidence she was killed in the house, unless you’ve already cleaned that mess up, too.”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” Peppin said, recovering his composure.

  “Then you better be prepared to be skewered in tomorrow’s paper because I’m telling the whole damned story. I’ve talked to Jerome Johnson’s parents—I know his real name was Terrell Simms-Reed. I know what happened when he was a Marine. If you want to pin the responsibility for her death on anybody, you ought to look in the mirror because that’s what my readers are going to see tomorrow.”

  I turned sharply and walked from the morgue.

  ***

  Back in the hospital parking lot, I sagged against my car door, gazing at the moon, my left hand searching through my capacious purse for cigarettes.

  I pulled one cigarette from the pack, placed it between my lips and lit it, taking my eyes off the moon only briefly.

  I inhaled deeply; my shoulders sank as I exhaled sadly.

  I’d have to go home and tell Duncan about it, of course. In all the years I’d been at the Journal-Gazette, there had been many murders and no doubt would be many more. Eac
h of them had been tough in their own way, but why did this one seem so tough?

  Maybe because I’d gotten to know the woman, I thought, scanning the sky for stars, trying to ignore the tears rising in my eyes. Maybe it’s because I’m losing my edge. Maybe, after twenty years, I should confine myself to sitting in front of the computer, editing stories and filling pages. I could throw these kinds of stories at either Graham Kinnon or Marcus Henning. They would do just fine. I could avoid getting involved that way…

  “When pigs fly,” I said aloud.

  Still, just a little bit ago, it all seemed so simple. I blinked back my tears and ground my cigarette into the pavement. No, I wouldn’t go home and tell Duncan. I’d go into the newsroom. I’d write the story, post it to the website, then throw it on the front page. Earlene could tell me she didn’t like my attitude and she could fire me for all I cared.

  To hell with what happened next. Let somebody else go do a story on noisy neighbors. It was real news I was after.

  Chapter 33 Graham

  “I thought you were bringing that digital recording in. It’s been two hours and no one in my office has seen you yet.” Judson Roarke’s voice was harsh on the other end of the cell phone call.

  The patch of woods between Spotts’ house and the abandoned barn was thick with underbrush, made darker by nightfall. I had to stop and catch my breath before answering.

  “I still am. I just haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “I told you not to go after Benjamin Kinnon and Doyle McMaster. I told you it’s too dangerous.”

  “I had to wait until it was safe for me to go get my car. It was parked in the Travel Inn lot. I had to hole up in that diner around the corner until they left.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “I think I know where the meeting is being held.” I gave him Spotts’ address. “Next door, there’s a yellow house—I think it’s foreclosed on because there’s some kind of notice taped on the door—and back at the rear of the property, there’s an old barn. They’re meeting there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “C’mon sheriff,” I joked. “You know I don’t have to reveal my sources.”

  “You screw with me and I’ll charge you with obstructing official business.”

  I sighed. “OK, the truth? My editor met with Melvin Spotts today and he complained about the loud parties that have been going on there. Benny’s and Doyle’s trucks are parked there right now.”

  Roarke disconnected without another word.

  I shoved my phone back in my shirt pocket and kept walking, moving the brush from my path with each step.

  Roarke wasn’t stupid. He knew where I was—he and every deputy in Plummer County were probably on their way, lights and sirens, busting ass down every narrow country road in Plummer County to converge on this place. I’d given him Spotts’ address and he could further hone down my location by pinging my cell phone signal off the nearest tower.

  So why didn’t I turn back? Why didn’t I just let Roarke finish the job like he was duly elected to do? I only had to walk back to my car and tell Spotts the sheriff and his posse were on their way. I only had to tell him he wouldn’t be having any more problems, park my butt in my Toyota and wait for the fireworks to begin.

  Why did I continue my trek to the barn?

  Because Benny abandoned me as a child? Because he’d abused my mother? What good would that do now? It wouldn’t change anything that happened back then. Were my actions, like Elizabeth said, self-righteousness and self-seeking? Was I just hell bent for a front-page story? Maybe she was right. Maybe I was the adrenaline and glory hound she said I was.

  No, the truth was I just wanted to see an end to the calamity this man left in his wake. I wanted to see this end. Only then could I say I’d put the disaster that was my father behind me.

  One final push through the undergrowth and I could see the back of the bank barn. Light shone through the slits in the thinning bare walls, black from age and weather. I could hear Benny and Doyle’s voices inside.

  Wire farm fencing along the edge of the property kept me from getting closer. I walked a little farther north, toward the back of Spotts’ property, searching for a break in the fence line. Before too long, I found it: a place where it had rusted and an animal, probably a deer, pushed on the fence until the brittle tines gave way, leaving a hole big enough to crawl through. I got down on my hands and knees and crept through.

  I looked down to brush the leaves and dirt off the knees of my pants and looked up—right into the barrel of Doyle McMaster’s shotgun.

  He grabbed my collar and yanked me to my feet.

  “Boy, I don’t know what you’re after, or what you’ve told Bennie, but right now, you’re trespassing.” Spinning me around, Doyle pushed me toward the barn, the shotgun barrel between my shoulder blades.

  “Bennie is my father,” I said, my hands in the air. “I just wanted to talk to him back there at the hotel.”

  “From what I could see, he wasn’t much interested, now was he?” He jabbed the gun barrel into my back. “Keep walking.”

  “Whose property is this?” I asked as we continued up the dirt bank to the barn’s sliding doors.

  “It was mine, until this country decided it didn’t need honest white workers any more,” Doyle said.

  “How’s that?”

  “What do you mean? You are as stupid as Bennie says you are.”

  “No, I’m serious. Tell me what happened.”

  We stopped outside the door of the barn. I turned to face Doyle, but he didn’t lower his gun.

  “Get inside.” McMaster pushed me through the open door and into the dark barn. I stumbled over something and fell on my face. I tried to get up, but a sharp kick in my side knocked the wind out of me. Groaning, I curled up in a fetal position.

  “Lookee here, Benny,” Doyle said. “Look what I found crawling around outside.”

  Benny rolled me over, his toothless face coming into focus as my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness of the barn. I could smell his acrid breath as he bent over me.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to come looking for me boy? Didn’t I?” he hissed. He gave me a sharp second kick. I felt a rib snap, and I sucked in my breath to keep from crying out.

  “Get him up—tie him up over there,” Bennie commanded.

  Doyle grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me toward the center of the barn floor where a rusted hay wagon and tools were laced together with generations of spider webs and brown dust. Doyle grabbed an old wooden chair from beside the wagon and pushed me into it. Benny pulled a handgun from the back of his pants and held it in my face as Doyle tied my hands and legs to the chair.

  “I want to know what you’re doing here,” Benny demanded.

  “I told you. I wanted to talk to you. You’re my father.”

  “Bullshit.” Benny swung the gun at my jaw. I cried out in pain as the butt struck the left side of my face and blood filled my mouth. I tried to answer as the gun butt came back, striking just beneath my right eye. “Talk to me, you whelp son of a bitch. Tell me the truth.”

  I hung my head, trying to wipe the blood from my mouth onto my shirt before I answered.

  “I know why you came to Jubilant Falls,” I said. I gasped between every couple words as I tried to control the pain of the broken rib. “I know about the Aryan Knights. I know what you’re trying to do here.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The police and sheriff had you under surveillance, but they didn’t have anybody who could get close enough without you figuring out they were cops.”

  “So they send a fucking reporter?” Doyle came around to face me. “As soon as I saw you outside the Travel Inn, I knew who you were. ”

  “I volunteered,” I gasped, as blood spilled from my mouth. “I wanted to see the asshole who got my mother sent to prison.”

  Doyle replied with the flat of his hand, striking my face. Benny stepped up and blocked him from striking
me again.

  “Let me handle this,” he said. “I told you what happened between your mother and me, didn’t I? I told you she was one dumb junkie bitch, didn’t I?”

  “I wanted you to know what happened to her, what happened to me.”

  My phone in my shirt pocket rang. Doyle reached over and pulled it out. Sheriff’s Roarke’s name and cell phone number showed on the phone’s glass face. Doyle showed the phone to Benny.

  “Answer it,” Ben said, nodding at me. “Let him talk.”

  Doyle slid a dirty finger across the phone’s glass surface to answer the call and held it to my ear.

  “Where are you, Graham?”

  “I’m here—in the barn,” I gasped.

  “You OK?”

  Doyle pulled the phone from my ear before I could answer. Pushing the speaker button, he held the phone in front of me.

  “Sheriff, this Doyle McMaster. We got your little snitch right here. You try to come get him and he’s dead.”

  “Put Graham back on the phone,” Roarke demanded.

  “I’m here, Sheriff,” I said.

  “You hurt?”

  “He’s gonna be hurt worse if you try to come in here and get him,” Doyle said.

  “Who’s in there with you?” Roarke asked. Doyle and I looked at Benny, who shook his head.

  “Nobody here but family,” I called into the phone.

  “You—” Benny swung his pistol again. Stars exploded in my head and everything went black.

  ***

  I don’t know how long I was out, but when I came to, floodlights streamed through the two barn windows and thinning barn walls, flooding the dark interior with harsh white light.

  Judson Roarke’s voice boomed over a bullhorn:

  “We need you to release the hostage, Mr. Kinnon. He needs medical attention. Let him go and we can end this peacefully.”

  I was still tied to the chair.

  My shoulders and hips ached and, as I ran my tongue around the inside of my swollen mouth, I could feel a couple upper molars move. The light stung my eyes, which were nearly swollen shut, and it hurt to breathe.