The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1)

by Claire Stibbe

  The Eriksen family owned the Bergenposten, a well-known newspaper on the west coast of Norway and, by all accounts, Eriksen’s father had at one time written an article citing Elgar for buying and selling illegal weapons.

  “Revenge,” Temeke said, suddenly sensing Malin in the doorway with two cups of coffee.

  “Revenge?” she echoed.

  “Little Morgan Eriksen.” Temeke grabbed the cup and read out the article. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there’s more. There’s always more.”

  “More, sir?”

  “It’s lonely out in those woods, lonely for a beautiful woman. Ole’s mother was only seventeen. Marja her name was.” He took a deep breath and blew over the rim of his cup. “Looks like he moved to California in 2001. Followed her here. Tried to find her, only she’d committed suicide a few years earlier. He has an aunt in San Francisco. Might want to talk to that aunt.”

  “Already tried that, sir. She passed away. Last June.”

  Temeke looked up at Malin and gave a curt nod. He didn’t want her to think he was too grateful. Didn’t want her to think he was disappointed either. “And Johannes Elgar had a heart attack in jail.”

  Malin sucked on the lip of her coffee cup. “Died with a photograph of Marja in his hand and the very first letter she ever wrote him.”

  Temeke had already read the transcript. It was the last sentence that seemed to spin, slowing down as he remembered it. Hans, you are the burning, glowing flame in my heart, Marja. The very same words Patti had written to Ole in a card. Words he had wanted her to write.

  “His father’s dead. Parkinson’s,” Temeke said, looking at the picture of a well-dressed man in his sixties. “Ole was put up for adoption.”

  “He went from foster home to foster home, sir.”

  Temeke sensed his vision blurring as he read that screen, but he wasn’t going to let it overwhelm him. “Talking of hunting rifles, did you see the Bonner Levinson file, the caretaker at the Shelby ranch?”

  Malin nodded and walked around to his side of the desk, eyes following the cursor on the computer as it flew across the screen. “His body was found at the bottom of a seventy foot ravine. He must have seen something.”

  “That’s the trouble with our witnesses,” Temeke muttered, leaning back in his chair. “They’re all dead.”

  “Yet here’s an elderly man shot four times at close range. There might be some muzzle staining on that gun if only we can find it, and as for the killer’s clothes, a nice blood spatter to go with it.”

  “According to this,” Temeke said, finger stabbing the screen, “the caretaker had other injuries consistent with a body being pulled down the ravine post mortem. Time of death, around midnight on the evening of Wednesday October 29th. Looks like they found a .22 caliber shell case at the top of the ravine and a walking stick. Levinson’s prints were on the stick but look at this. There’s part of a shoe imprint in the lining of the coat he wore. Forensics say it’s a gripper outsole with the Sebago logo. A leather moccasin.”

  “Those are going to be hard to find,” Malin muttered. “The print on the lining isn’t enough to tell us the shoe size.”

  Temeke cast a glance at the ballistic evidence. The bullet was said to be grooved, found to have come from a Sears or a Revelation. So far the gun had never been found.

  His raw instinct told him the ranch area wasn’t saturated with offenders. It wasn’t exactly saturated with neighbors. “Any guns in the house on Walter?”

  Malin shook her head. “Podge said this man had a thing for teenage girls. School girls.”

  “Podge was a sucker for booze and the old green dragon. Probably too high to know anything about the girls. He was scared when I found him.”

  Malin crossed one arm over her stomach and drained her cup. “I took a look at the yearbooks at Cibola High. Jaelyn Gains, Lavonne Jackson, Mikaela May, Lyana Durgins, Elizabeth Moya and Mandy Guzman. 6 victims from the same school, all taken within a month of each other. The only difference was Kizzy Williams. She was at Clemency Christian School.”

  “Where were they taken?”

  “From parks, malls, parking lots. Lyana was taken only five hundred yards from her home. She was walking the dog.”

  “And Becky?”

  “Last seen at Corrales Café after she finished work. I remember her mother saying Becky’s boss had called to say she would be late. Had an accent. When I spoke to him he had no recollection of such a phone call. Nor did he have an accent.”

  Temeke studied Malin’s face. Her eyes for all their listless stare were moist. “Anything wrong?”

  “I wanted to ask you something. I wanted to ask if you said anything to Hollister?”

  Temeke felt the beginnings of a belly ache. The coffee wasn’t going down well either. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because he left me an email. Wanted to know where I was.”

  Temeke pursed his lips, gave her a sheepish smile. “I gave him a tinkle, man to man. And he knows if he sets one foot in my nice shiny police station and gives so much as a wink to my partner, he’s toast.” That made her smile. It even made her snigger. “So who does the house on Smith belong to?”

  “Kelly Coldwell, realtor with Desert Sun Properties. They said she’s on a cruise in the Caribbean. Left ten days ago.”

  Temeke sucked in a long breath. He was hoping for a concrete lead, not more checking up to do. “If the driver of that Camaro is Ole Eriksen, he ought to be in hospital.”

  “Dr. Vasillion called half an hour ago, sir. He said the blood in the street belonged to Patti Lucero.”

  Temeke thought he hadn’t heard her correctly and shut his mouth before a string of cuss words crossed the gap between them. If it had any significance he couldn’t see it.

  “The bone was analyzed on Friday, sir. Funny the one thing he tried to hide about the victim ended up on your doorstep.”

  “He wants us to find him, that’s why. Wants the publicity.”

  Malin swallowed like she had a sore throat. “They found traces of polyethylene in the sample. He was carrying Patti’s blood around in a milk carton.”

  Temeke made a face, although he was forced to admit it was the only thing that made sense. “If we don’t find him soon, I’ll have to buy a wig and send myself in as decoy.”

  Malin grinned and then seemed to pause to consider her next words. “Dr. Vasillion said when he examined the girl’s head it had no brain. Like it had been completely sucked out. I think he wants to see us down at the lab.”

  Temeke’s eyes flicked toward Hackett’s office, finger pressed to his lips. He wasn’t about to pay him a visit, not after that sodding email. “We’ll grab a sandwich on the way, Marl. Make sure you bring some cash.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The office of the medical investigator was located in a large blue and white glass building near the Big I. New, immaculate, state of the art, a facility after Temeke’s own heart.

  After being buzzed in by security personnel, he had a strange feeling they weren’t expected.

  “You didn’t need to come down here, Detective. I could have sooner talked to you on the phone,” Dr. Vasillion said, cinched tightly in a plastic apron and standing behind an autopsy table.

  Temeke shot Malin a look and raised one eyebrow. “Always better to see you in person. Isn’t that right Malin?”

  Malin gave a tight nod, eyes falling on a human skull which had been placed upside down on a roll of duct tape.

  “I usually prefer a lot more meat on them,” the doctor said picking up the skull, “but we’ll use Hector here as our model. We know the girls were drugged and decapitated with the hatchet we found. Are either of you familiar with Egyptian mummification?”

  Temeke nodded, seeing Malin’s cheeks graying out of the corner of his eye. What was the betting she threw up?

  “The Egyptians used a metal hook which was inserted up through the nostril into the brain case.” Dr. Vasillion demonstrated with a fing
er. “I found a second incision where the spinal cord exits the skull which appears to have been smashed with a mallet.”

  “So he cracked her skull and scooped out the brain,” Temeke said.

  The doctor nodded, giving Malin a sideways glance. “Hence the metal hook, a mallet and a spoon. Basic, but very effective. The head was completely exsanguinated. I’m confident the cocktail of drugs didn’t kill her. It was the axe that did.”

  “Didn’t see a metal hook in the house,” Temeke said, reading the message in the doctor’s expression. “Did you see a hook, Marl?”

  He looked down at his partner bent over a stainless steel sink. The sound of her breakfast gurgling down the drain reminded him he needed to see to his waste disposal when he got home. He ambled over and patted her between the shoulders. “Got room now for a sandwich.”

  The doctor escorted her to a chair and gave her a cup of water. Temeke saw him nod and grin, and walk back along the corridor swinging Hector like a bowling ball.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Malin said ten minutes later as she sat in the passenger seat of the Explorer. “Couldn’t feel my legs.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. You came over all queasy at the thought of blood and brains.” Temeke started the car and turned the heater on high. “Not the first time a cop has made a complete prat of themselves in front of the doc. And it won’t be the last.”

  When he’d finished telling about the other five, they were already on the west side of town and parked in the front parking lot of the Northwest Area Command. Malin had been unusually quiet all the way.

  “Take the car and go home,” Temeke said, feeling a twinge of frustration. “I’ll tell Hackett you’ve come down with flu.”

  “But I haven’t got the flu,” she said, rubbing one red eye.

  Temeke opened the car door and lit a cigarette. He puffed out a smoke ring and watched it curl around the wing mirror before disappearing altogether. “Are you getting anything out of being a detective?” he asked. It was a pitiful stare she gave him, eyes watery. “I’m not sure you’ve got the stomach for it.”

  “I love my job,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  “Got PMS?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “Don’t you dare. I’ve put up with your spite all the way from the northeast heights―”

  “Can’t be PMS then.”

  “No, it’s not PMS. I don’t get PMS,” she said, snatching a pile of papers from the glove compartment.

  “Can’t come to work in a bad mood, Marl. Detective work is no joy. It’s bloody miserable actually, especially out in the field. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir. I know what you mean.”

  “Throw up again on my watch and I’ll have you suspended. I can’t say fairer than that.”

  “You can’t suspend someone for throwing up, sir!” Malin’s smile flickered and then sputtered out.

  “And where are my gas receipts?” he said to the empty passenger seat. She was already running up the steps to the front door.

  “Women,” he muttered and slammed the car door, grinding what was left of his cigarette underfoot.

  He switched on his best smile for Sarge in the front lobby and nodded a greeting. “Any news on that surveillance video?”

  “Still in Imaging, sir,” Sarge said without looking up. He was looking at the Best of Swimsuit Models in the Sports Illustrated.

  “When you’ve quite finished poring over underage Busty Brenda there, I’d like a word.”

  “All I know,” Sarge said, closing the magazine, “is that the wretched thing was too grainy to make a positive ID.”

  “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

  “I’ve been there all day, sir. Watched her cry, watched her sleep. I’m glad she’s alive, but I don’t know what to say. Rae’s with her now. She’ll know what to do.”

  “Right,” Temeke said, rubbing his forehead.

  Sarge blew his nose and seemed to nod away the memory. “Oh, and I got a phone call this afternoon from an Edna Barnes. Said she saw a cop outside Cibola High about the time when Patti was taken. Said she used to be a police composite artist. Made her very own sketch and then went and gave it to Jennifer Danes.”

  “She did what?”

  “Headline news now. Oh and Edna’s a bit hard of hearing by the way.”

  Temeke made a note to see this Edna Barnes in the morning and reluctantly climbed the stairs to his office. Hackett’s door opened and he poked his big fat head out. “Can I have a word?”

  Brilliant, thought Temeke, pretending to dig deep into his pockets for those gas receipts. “I’m not playing pocket snooker, sir, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just can’t seem to find―”

  Hackett pulled him in and closed the door. “You can quit your bellyaching. Malin already gave them to me. First things first. The public got their first taste of Eriksen in the morning news. A sketch drawn by a witness. Pity she didn’t bring it to us first.”

  “The police don’t pay for sketches, sir. I expect she got a tidy sum from the Journal.”

  “I take it you know what this means?”

  “It’s all over the canteen and our killer’s gone to ground.”

  Hackett sat down on his chair and huffed out a loud breath. He stared at the ceiling, cheeks redder than a baboon’s ass. “It’s a shame my officers couldn’t find poor little Becky Moran. She had to come home all by herself.”

  “Not home, sir. St Joseph’s hospital. By all accounts she was helped in by one of their security guards. Similar uniform. Should pass as one of us.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s embarrassing. Makes us look incompetent.”

  “You feeling alright, sir?” Temeke wondered why the poor old git reminded him of something out of a Bram Stoker novel.

  “Sit down, Temeke.” Hackett blew out a large breath, rocking his chair on its two back legs. He suddenly found a rubber band on his desk that required his immediate attention.

  Temeke noted the use of his first name, felt the blood pumping in his head.

  “Luis Alvarez has gone missing. There was blood on the floor of his garage. His blood by the look of it. His wife wondered why the garage door was still open.” Hackett looked over his half-moon spectacles at the rubber band so he didn’t have to look at Temeke. “He’s highest on our priority list right now. Especially since his nice new Charger’s nowhere to be found.”

  “How much blood?”

  “A lot.”

  “Are you telling me he’s dead?”

  “There’s no murder case without a body. You know that.”

  “I’ll get on to it right away, sir.”

  Hackett held up a hand. “Since he’s family I think it best if you didn’t. Like I said before, I want you and Malin out in the field. And I mean out. Oh, and before I forget, your jeep.”

  “My jeep?”

  “Slight accident. Someone backed into it. Took off the back fender.”

  Temeke felt the heat rise to his cheeks, felt his hands ball into two tight fists. “It’s bloody Sarge. I’ve told him to check his wing mirrors every time he reverses. But, no! He has to put his bleeding foot down and bang goes my antique Hotchkiss. I bet it’s got a dent and all.”

  Hackett leaned in a little closer. “It may have escaped your smug British ass that Sarge parks around the front. And your Hotchkiss is hardly an antique if it’s a rebuild. I’m sick of you correcting my English, sick of you calling Americans Yanks, and sick of you coming to work with stains down your pants. Anyone would think you’ve been having a bit in the bathrooms.”

  Temeke looked down at his pants and sure enough, there was a nasty white stain on his fly. Probably mayonnaise from the sandwich he had at lunch.

  “Were you sleeping with Becky Moran?”

  There was an audible snap as Temeke’s head jerked up. “Of course I wasn’t sleeping with Becky Moran. She’s a kid.”

  “I’m glad you notice
d. Are you sleeping with Officer Lopez?”

  “Who?”

  “You heard.”

  “You mean Flossy from Fingerprinting? You’ve got a bloody nerve. How am I supposed to get my leg over with all this overtime?”

  “Go home,” Hackett said. “Malin will give you a ride.”

  No she bloody won’t, Temeke thought. He’d already told her to get lost. And what was this sudden interest in his sex life?

  He heaved a sigh and stalked back to his office, sinking his rear deep into a leather chair. He’d hardly be fit for anything if he didn’t go home and get a nap. Sniffing the air he could smell traces of perfume and he lit up a cigarette just to get rid of it. Pushing out a series of smoke rings he let his mind wander to the last time he saw Luis flashing that big white smile of his.

  He wasn’t dead. He’d probably just gone down to the Fat Jacks for a pint or two. As for his Charger, it was probably parked around the back by the dustbins.

  He stared at the victims’ pictures on his wall, eyes darting from one girl to another. They were all alike in a way, same bright oval eyes, same smooth dark skin. Some darker than others. Patti’s eyes were pale blue though. That was the only difference.

  Glancing through the window at the rear parking lot, he saw the empty space where his jeep had once been. Might never be the same, he thought, hearing the toll of a funeral bell in his mind.

  He didn’t want to go home to a wife who froze him out because he was never there and kept her legs tightly closed when he was. A wife who was culinary-challenged and could only whip up a scrambled egg on good days. A wife who if she ever found his stash of weed in the backyard downspout wouldn’t hesitate to blow the whistle and get him fired.

  He deserved it. All of it.

  He felt a soreness in his throat when he thought of Serena. Sometimes he wanted to run from her, sometimes he wanted to run to her. He took a few deep breaths, hand rubbing his chin. Surely, her pain was worse than his.