Signature: A David Wolf Mystery (David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Book 9)

by Jeff Carson

  “Tied up,” Agent Hannigan said.

  Lorber nodded. “Probably strangled while she was tied up so he wouldn’t get any defensive wounds on him during the kill.”

  “Christ,” White said as he stepped nearer. “Where’s her ear?”

  They all crowded next to White to get the same angle view he had and saw a red hole where her ear used to be.

  Agent Luke and Hannigan gave each other an unreadable look.

  “Jesus Christ,” White backed into Wolf. “You never said anything about her ear being cut off.”

  Lorber pulled his eyebrows together. “We’re just now processing the scene, sir. I’m not sure—”

  “He’s here?” MacLean turned to Agent Luke. “In Rocky Points? That’s who you were chasing? That sicko from down south?”

  Luke blinked. “That’s what we’re here to find out, Sheriff.”

  Lorber shrugged. “Van Gogh killed by strangulation and left women with severed ears. Put them on display.” He looked at Luke, and then Wolf. “Looks like his work to me.”

  His work.

  Gene turned to them and swallowed, adding his own nod.

  “Shit,” White said, looking left and right along the river.

  The Adrenaline Games banner flapped on a breeze, and the side tarp on the tent snapped and lifted up, giving any people across the river that happened to be looking at the perfect time a glimpse of the corpse.

  Wolf watched a woman put a hand over her mouth and turn into the man next to her.

  Shit indeed.

  Chapter 3

  Hey, it’s me,” Wolf said into his cell phone. “I guess you’re working. Listen, I’m not going to be able to go to the fair tonight with you and Ella.”

  He walked to the window of his office and gazed down at the scene below. Main Street had been converted into a skateboard and BMX bike park a block or so down to the south. Directly underneath the window there were dozens of tents set up. A tinny voice over a loudspeaker barely penetrated the triple pane glass and the soft howl of the air conditioner vent that shot cold air up the leg of his jeans.

  “It’s … about this morning,” Wolf continued. “I have to work on this. Anyway, give me a call, okay?”

  He pushed the call end button on his cell and shoved it in his pocket, and within seconds it started vibrating. Pulling it out, he hesitated, vaguely recognizing the phone number on the screen.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Detective Wolf? This is Lucretia Smith.” She stopped talking and let the silence take over for a few seconds. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember me, right?”

  “Vaguely,” Wolf lied.

  She blew into the phone. “I was calling to see if we could meet.”

  “About what?”

  “About the dead girl that’s everywhere on the internet. You don’t want a bunch of idiots on Twitter writing your story for you, do you? I figure you want to get on the record, let everyone know that Rocky Points is safe for the Adrenaline games this weekend.”

  Wolf formulated a response, and then exhaled instead. He sure as hell wasn’t going to mention the ear thing. He’d done a search on the internet and found any pictures of the victim’s body to be fuzzy and pixelated when zoomed in on. It was impossible to see if her ear was there or not, though the killer seemed to have turned her body to make it clear. There had been no mention of it, so for now the secret was safe.

  “I have a source telling me that she had a severed left ear.”

  Was safe.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She laughed and it sounded like a hyena. “I don’t give up my sources.”

  Wolf said nothing.

  “I know you want the story to be accurate so your department isn’t shown in poor light. And … I know you’re a smart man, Detective Wolf, but I’m just going to come out and say it. You owe me.”

  Wolf paused. “For what?”

  She scoffed into the phone. “If it wasn’t for me you’d all would be sweating for November right now. Wondering if you even had a job.”

  “Last time I checked they had a law on the books preventing anyone getting fired if a new Sheriff came into office.”

  “Are you being serious right now? Because of my piece that law was put on the books.”

  Wolf was not being serious. He knew what Lucretia Smith’s “piece” had done for the department. Earlier that year she had cracked a case involving Sergeant Deputy Greg Barker, candidate for the sheriff’s office Adam Jackson from Aspen Colorado, and councilwoman Judy Fleming. They’d been caught conspiring against the department, trying to make it look bad in order to make themselves look better for this year’s elections on November 17th.

  However, they had made one mistake in targeting Wolf to be the pawn in their game. A game that ultimately cost lives and the career of Detective Hernandez, who could never fully use his shooting arm again, and who had to be let go from the department because of it.

  Wolf and MacLean had found out the truth about the collusion, and the tables had turned, but since that day Deputy Barker had still been in the department. Sheriff MacLean was a crafty politician, and keeping Barker on as a deputy meant Barker’s father would be happy and would be forced to support MacLean in his next bid for another four years in office. The wealthy rancher and his influential tongue would have no choice but to support MacLean any and all of his viewpoints and decisions.

  Adam Jackson’s power play and infiltration of the department through Barker had been a double-edged sword. On the one side Wolf had been introduced to Lauren Coulter. On the other side, Lauren Coulter and her daughter had been put in mortal danger.

  MacLean had played his hand, keeping Councilwoman Judy Fleming, the “Aspen Wonder” and Deputy Barker in play for future use. But every day Wolf saw these corrupt faces walking around town was one day too many.

  So that’s when Lucretia Smith of the Denver independent Press association received an anonymous packet of detailed information about the massive corruption from an anonymous source named Black Diamond.

  Black Diamond had been a persona invented by Wolf, Patterson, and Rachette.

  As for Lucretia Smith’s part in it all, it had been a lazy, lottery-winner-esque bit of investigative journalism that had boosted her career as a freelance writer, landing her on CNN and Fox News for months to come where she pushed her new book.

  Wolf owed her nothing.

  “I have nothing for you,” he said. And who the hell told her about the ear?

  “Nothing?”

  There was a knock on his door and Special Agent Luke poked her head inside.

  Wolf held up a finger. “Bye Miss Smith.” Wolf hung up and pocketed his phone.

  Luke walked in and collapsed on the chair, bringing in the flowery scent of her shampoo. “I’m exhausted.”

  “How did you guys beat us to the body? Why were you here without me knowing?”

  “Without me knowing?” She raised an eyebrow. “Last time I heard you threw the race for sheriff and now you’re a lowly detective.”

  “MacLean knew?”

  “Of course he knew.”

  He eyed the door, considering storming down to MacLean’s office.

  “Listen, let me follow my orders and I swear to you you’ll know everything I do within twenty-four hours.”

  “Not good enough. Time is of the essence here. You know that.”

  When she said nothing, he paced in front of the window. “You knew Van Gogh was in Rocky Points, so you guys rolled into town … tried to find him. But you failed and now we have a dead body. Maybe a local girl, whose parents are …” Wolf realized why she was there. “You have an ID.”

  She nodded. “Sally Claypool. You know her?”

  “No.” The roiling in his stomach was no less. This girl was a part of his small community. There would be many affected people.

  “Twenty-six years of age. Lived with her parents here in Rocky Points.”
<
br />   My God. Her parents. What they must be feeling right now.

  “We have a favor to ask.”

  He stopped and looked at her.

  Luke closed her eyes and exhaled. “We need somebody to tell the parents.”

  “Shit.” He left for the door.

  “Patterson has the address,” Luke called after him. “And bring them to county. We need them to ID.”

  “Of course you do.” He muttered under his breath.

  Chapter 4

  You all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” Rachette said, but he was feeling anything but all right.

  Failure was no stranger to Tom Rachette, but this was getting ridiculous. These days, failure was a constant underlying feeling, a background noise that drowned out half of everything else. He was slow to react to quips in the squad room, even slower to dole out a good beauty. Not like him. And now this?

  He looked at Wolf. The man was clearly not buying it.

  “You don’t look all right,” Wolf said.

  “Well, I just screwed up the whole thing with the parents. So …”

  “Ah.” Wolf twisted the windshield wipers and the blades slowed.

  Another curtain of rain was coming up fast. A bolt of lightning struck on the flat expanse between the two sides of the valley.

  “You were okay.”

  Rachette rolled his head back. “Okay? I said, ‘I’m sorry, but we found your son.’ Your son.”

  The rain hit the windshield like a shotgun blast.

  “And you corrected yourself. I think they got the gist of it. I don’t think they’re worried about your delivery of the news right now.”

  Rachette’s face went hot. “I know. Sorry. I’m just … I guess looking at what happened today, things could be much worse.” He rolled his shoulders back and took a sharp breath.

  “You did well,” Wolf said.

  Rachette believed him, and warmth swirled in his chest. At least Wolf cared about him. Three words, and the guy could make you feel like an invincible god sometimes.

  Nothing like his father. The guy stayed in Nebraska for a fish fry instead of coming to see his son get married for God’s sake. A fish fry.

  The pattering of rain peppered with the occasional piece of hail hammering into the roof kept them company for a while.

  No words.

  It was the words Wolf held back that were as important as the ones he said, Rachette decided. The guy got it. He didn’t want to talk about it. Patterson would have been chattering right now. Would have been talking about it again.

  Eyeing the rearview mirror, Wolf let up on the gas.

  Rachette leaned forward and checked the side mirror. The guy’s headlights were two orbs flickering behind the mist kicked up by Wolf’s SUV. Bright blue sky was behind them, making the vehicle a shifting silhouette. It was like a metaphor, them driving into the darkness to identify their dead daughter.

  “Damn,” he said. “I’m just glad their neighbor volunteered to drive them. Can you imagine being in that car right now?”

  Wolf said nothing.

  Rachette leaned back and inhaled the rain soaked air coming through the vents.

  They passed a sign that read Sluice-Byron County Hospital – 4 miles.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and he checked the screen. It was Julie again. What the hell did she want from him? Get your own life. Stay out of mine.

  “Who’s that?”

  “What?”

  “The phone call.”

  “My sister.” Rachette hit the call end button and put the phone in his pocket. He gave it two to three minutes, at least, before the phone vibrated indicating she was done with her third ranting email in the last three days.

  “Huh. All okay out in Nebraska?”

  “Define okay. Like, are my parents finally putting their foot down with my sister and she’s finally, after four years, moving out of my parents’ house okay? Or, she’s calling me to come stay with me for God knows how long okay?”

  A hint of a smile cracked through Wolf’s stony face.

  “What?”

  The Chief shrugged. “Might be nice for you to have Julie in town for a while.”

  “Why?” He felt a stab of betrayal.

  Wolf said nothing.

  “She’s a mooch. She’ll be sleeping on my couch for four years, eating my food, watching TV, probably …” he let the sentence die.

  Truth be told he was embarrassed of his little sister. She was loud. Obnoxious. And if he was considered outgoing, then his little sister was an infomercial saleswoman, up in your face and talking non-stop.

  Patterson liked her, which completely confused him. But when Julie had visited two summers ago, he felt right back in ninth grade, when he was a freshman in high school and she was still in elementary school and still tagging along, tripping him up literally and figuratively every single day.

  Come stay with him? Live with him? Hell no. His life was too complicated right now as it was.

  They passed through the heaviest of the rain when the glass façade of County hospital rose from the side of the valley.

  He felt his blood pressure start to go up. His breathing escalated. He’d shot and killed a man, had been shot in the shoulder, had witnessed violent death first hand. But something about standing next to the corpses. It made his gag reflex come alive. Last time he’d been in the morgue with Lorber poking at those Cold Lake victims he’d felt vertigo sweep over him and barely escaped without puking.

  Wolf slowed and pulled into the parking lot.

  Underneath the covered drive in front of the glass entrance doors stood Special Agent Kristen Luke with some overblown meathead in a suit. Hannigan, he remembered.

  The two agents stopped talking with one another and watched them approach.

  Damn, Kristen Luke looked good. Her hair was lighter now, bleached by the sun or chemicals, Rachette didn’t know, but it was hot. It was cut shorter, split in the middle of her tanned forehead and tucked behind the ears. And that body. He would spend an entire night in Lorber’s morgue for one hour in the sack with that woman. Wolf was the luckiest man alive, ever.

  A vision of Charlotte bending over him in bed, her wide mouth smiling, flashed in his mind.

  They parked and got out. It was quiet, the air smelling of pine and sage oils released by the rain.

  Sally Claypool’s neighbor squeaked to a stop right next to Rachette. Through the water beaded windows he saw three faces drained of life.

  Sometimes this job was the worst.

  Sally Claypool’s stepfather was the first out of the car and stretching his arms over his head, like he was silently complaining for the distance they had to drive to identify his dead stepdaughter.

  Rachette opened the back door for Sally Claypool’s mother.

  She had her purse on her lap, a wad of used tissues in a fist. Her eyes were bloodshot, red rimmed.

  “Help you up, ma’am?” He held out a hand.

  She ignored him and got out on her own, walking away toward the back of the car, as if she was beginning a long journey across the sage field ahead, then up into the forest to go disappear.

  Wolf came to her and took her arm. Firm, turning her the right direction and uttering something to her. So gentle.

  With more than a little relief that Wolf had taken over, he took up the rear and thought about corpses. His mouth began watering instantly.

  “Place is a lot bigger than I remember it.”

  Nobody reacted to the stepfather’s pointless statement.

  Special Agent Luke broke away from her big partner and walked toward them with confident strides.

  Sally’s stepfather hitched up his pants and nodded to her, and Luke walked right by him to Sally’s mother.

  “Hello, Mrs. Trawler.” Sally’s mother had taken the last name of step-dad. “I’m Special Agent Kristen Luke with the FBI. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Sally’s mother looked down and nodded, began a new wave of sobbing.


  It was too much. Rachette closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. It was sweet, tangy with pine, but only made him feel worse.

  When he opened his eyes he flinched, because Kristen Luke was a foot from him, leaning in to speak.

  “Hey, we need to talk,” she said.

  She clutched his tricep and led him away. She smelled like flowers and lotions, and it was all he could do to resist flexing his arm underneath her warm grip. That would have been weird.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Uh, good.”

  “Good. Listen, we need you to stay out of the identification process. Okay?”

  Like Superman must have felt when somebody finally removed the kryptonite handcuffs, relief washed over him like a bucket of warm water. It was almost orgasmic.

  He nodded, trying to keep his expression neutral. “Okay. No problem.”

  She slapped his arm. “Thanks.”

  Rachette watched her walk away, pulling up her jacket to tuck her blouse into her belt line. He swallowed at the sight of her panty-lines.

  Two nights in the morgue. Two.

  Chapter 5

  That’s her.”

  Doctor Lorber lowered the sheet back over Sally Claypool’s face, flicking a glance at Wolf.

  Wolf didn’t react. There was no need to. It was clear neither her mother nor stepfather had seen the severed ear. They had set up Sally’s body with her missing ear on the far side, brought the parents in from the correct angle and Lorber had lifted the sheet just so.

  It was a deception Luke and Hannigan insisted on. Wolf was still on the fence about it. If Lucretia Smith ran with her source’s information, then everyone was going to know soon enough it was the Van Gogh killer—one of the most infamous monsters that ever lived in Colorado. Just not right now.

  Sally’s mother backed away and looked desperately behind her, ready to get out of the room.

  “Please, come this way Mrs. Trawler.” Luke led her by the arm out the swinging doors and into the hallway. Another doorway later and they were out of the formalin stench and into the disinfectant odor of the hospital’s east wing.