Dead Poor

by M. K. Coker

  No wonder Adam was so formal and looked so inordinately relieved to see her. Karen felt her brain grind to a complete stop. Assault. She’d assumed fisticuffs, perhaps involving the newly evicted.

  “Nothing possible about it,” Biester said, dabbing at his face. Now that she was closer, Karen could see he had a split lip. “Bastard got away from me, or I’d gladly hand him off to you. Animal.”

  Karen pulled in her emotions, wished desperately for coffee, and settled for squaring her shoulders and mentally slapping herself awake. “Victim?”

  Donahue answered before Biester. “Lori, that poor girl who cleans the toilets.”

  At two in the morning? Then again, given the uncertain hours of her other job, perhaps the woman often did her work in the wee hours. Here Karen had been thinking that her own job was the worst, getting woken up two nights in a row.

  She really, really did not need another major investigation on her plate. Did they have a rapist and a killer loose in Grove Park or a rapist-killer? “Do we have any idea who the attacker was?”

  Biester stared at his hand, stained with his own blood. “It’s my fault. I should’ve told you... I never imagined...”

  “Get over it,” Donahue said with the bracing tone of a first responder. “You saved her. I was too far away to catch the guy, but you saved her before he got anywhere with her. That’s the important thing.”

  Karen’s shoulders came down from her ears. “She’s not... hurt?”

  “Bumps and bruises. And I think her wrist might be broken,” Adam said grimly. “But she denies that he got any further.”

  “All right. I need you to take statements from Mr. Biester and Mr. Donahue. I’ll take Lori with me to the office for the formal interview. Do we have a scene to protect?”

  Adam shook his head. “He knocked her down on the trail. With all the leaves, there’s no good footprints. She was lucky. I heard her scream as I pulled into the parking lot for my patrol, and so did Mr. Donahue from his campsite.” Adam waved up the hill a short way where Karen could see glowing lights from a few campers. “Biester got there first, as he was already on site, making sure the last of the stragglers got the message that the encampment was closed. The attacker bolted down the trail, toward the creek and the trailer park, after tussling with Biester. As for any danger...” He looked at Biester.

  “We can alert the remaining campers. They can choose to go or stay, and I dare say most will go. If you stay to patrol, though, I’d say there’s little danger now he’s been run off.” He looked into the darkness, into the woods. “He’ll go to ground.”

  Karen’s brain finally booted up. “You know his identity?”

  Biester hesitated. “Actually, no, I can’t be sure. It’s been dark as a coal mine tonight with the cloud cover. I ran blindly down the trail from memory, crashed into him—tripped, really. So much for heroics. Your deputy came rushing down with his flashlight, and Donahue with his, blinding me, and Lori screaming bloody murder. So I can’t swear to anything, really, it happened so fast.”

  She heard the next word, unspoken. “But?”

  “But I might... I might know who it was.” He spiked his bloodied fingers through his gnarled hair. “I don’t know his real name. He’s a poacher who lives in the woods. Calls himself Mountain Man. I’ve sort of... turned a blind eye. I shouldn’t have.”

  Too many blind eyes in this thing. “Wears camos and has a beard?” Karen asked, thinking she would need to rouse Marek after all. Had Mountain Man killed Bunting? If so, why?

  Biester stopped dabbing his lip. “You’ve met him?”

  “Only heard of him.” And she’d felt his creepy gaze on her at the overlook. “Do you know his bolt-hole?”

  “Used to be that earth-berm shelter he made down by the creek. He planned to live here during the winter. But he moved out when the trailer trash moved in. I don’t know where. But... I could look.”

  Karen shook her head. “No. Don’t. I can set up an official search, come daylight. In fact, the county commissioners will, I’m sure, demand it, once word gets out that there’s a rapist in the park.”

  She was surprised when he didn’t protest that it would scare off the state parks board.

  “Finding that animal is more important than upgrading the park status,” he said stiffly. “Lori is my employee. A good one. I don’t want to lose her. Anything I can do, just let me know. Her wrist...”

  Karen nodded. “I’ll take care of her. Adam?”

  Her deputy walked silently with her over to the squad. Rain began to fall lightly, and a coyote howled somewhere down in the woods. She opened the squad door. “Lori? Sheriff Mehaffey. I’ll drive you down to my office.”

  The hunched-over figure straightened. “Oh, no, that’s not necessary.”

  Karen blinked at the unexpected response. “Pardon?”

  “I can drive. I need my car.”

  “You’re shaken.”

  “I can drive,” she insisted.

  “All right. We’re headed for the clinic first.”

  “No. No need.” After a slight pause, Lori got out, cradling her wrist against her body. “I’m okay. It’s just sprained. I’d... I’d just like to get this all over with. The statement, I mean. I haven’t cleaned the johns yet.”

  “You don’t need to do it tonight,” Biester said. “In fact, you can take some time off, heal up.”

  “I need the money,” she said tightly. “But I’ll wait for daylight.” She hurried over to her little hatchback.

  Donahue said, “Girl’s got backbone. Well... I guess we’re going to wake up some people at the campground. Deputy? Mr. Biester?”

  With a final glance at the silhouetted figure in the hatchback, the men moved off, leaving Karen to lead Lori out of the parking lot in a much smaller procession, but still reminiscent of Not-Johnson’s journey out of the wilderness.

  CHAPTER 28

  In the well-lit but eerily silent Sheriff’s Office, Karen set two steaming cups of coffee on the scarred table in the interview room.

  Lori slipped her phone into her pocket with her good hand. “Um... thanks. I could’ve made it.”

  “Not a problem. It’s my personal brand. Sisters’ Blend.”

  Apparently thinking Karen had taken offense, she stammered, “Oh, I didn’t mean... only that I’ve made a lot of coffee...”

  Without warning, Lori started to shake then put her head down on the table and bawled.

  Dammit. Karen should’ve called in Marek. He did better with weepers, in his silent, gentle way. Well, she could do the silent. Barely. She wanted to lay a reassuring hand on the woman’s arm but decided against it. Touchy-feely could go wrong with an assault victim. She remembered that much from her training.

  So she waited it out until Lori hiccupped. “I’m... I’m sorry. It wasn’t that bad, really, but... it’s been a shitty day.” She cupped the mug in one hand and looked down into the dark liquid. “You see, I... I lost my job.”

  Karen frowned. “Biester praised your—”

  “No, not him.”

  Karen cast her mind back. Right. The boss from hell. “I thought you went back to work for him.”

  Lori sniffed and looked up, eye sockets a purple so deep they looked almost black on her white face. “I did. He fired me at the end of my shift. Paid me in cash from the till.” She dabbed at her tears with the sleeve of her dirty flannel shirt. “Do you ever feel like... like you’re in molasses... or like those bugs that Bob... that are trapped in amber?”

  “Yes, I’ve felt like that,” Karen said. About her current case. About her years of marriage to a man who had been essentially dead. About the long months waiting to give up Eyre. “I’d speak to your boss, but I think Donahue had it right. You need a better boss.”

  Lori’s mouth twisted. “Mr. Donahue was really nice to me. But he doesn’t get it. Jobs don’t grow on trees out here.” She gave a watery if real smile. “Not enough trees.”

  There’d been plenty in Grove Park.
Karen took a deep breath. Time to get down to business. “All right. Take another good sip. I need to take your statement.”

  Lori started to cup the mug with both hands then hissed out a gasp of pain. “Yes. Please.”

  “Start from the beginning. You came from your other job, I take it?”

  “Yeah. I was crying my eyeballs out. Wondering what I did to deserve having my life go to shit again. I drove down to the creek parking lot. No one was there. That really surprised me. Usually, there’s a bunch of cars from... well... the homeless.” She spoke slowly, as if picking her way through the night and memories she didn’t want to recall. “They don’t bother me. I just go about my business. Some bad apples, but most are good. Work hard. Then I... I heard, or felt, someone behind me. Like needles pricking you in the neck, you know? Then I heard this sound, almost like an animal, like deep in their throat? I panicked and screamed. I ran down the trail to... to find help.”

  As Lori had given her an address in Ted’s trailer park, Karen thought that the woman must know most if not all the people who’d been evicted. Would Lori be next? Karen hoped it wouldn’t come to that. That added incentive to grill Digges in the morning. “We know about the encampment that was there.”

  “Was?”

  “We cleared it out today.”

  “Oh. That’s... that’s sad.”

  Karen wanted to ask her about Mountain Man, but she pulled herself up short. Don’t lead the witness, she reminded herself. “Did you recognize your attacker? Note any distinguishing marks, facial hair, or clothing?”

  Lori lifted her head. “I never saw him. He hit me from behind.”

  Too bad that Bunting was dead. Because he would be her prime suspect in the attack. Taken from behind. The MO of Two Fingers’s mother’s attacker.

  “He laid me out flat then pulled me up.” She crossed her good arm across her midsection. Then, with a little gasping shake, she moved it until her hand stopped at the snap of her jeans. “After that, it all happened so fast. I heard someone running, crashing through stuff, jiggling lights. Then I heard a big ‘oof.’ That must’ve been him running into Mr. Biester. Is he all right?”

  “Just a split lip,” Karen assured her. “And a blow to his pride, maybe, in not being able to bring down your attacker. Now you... I want to take you to the clinic. I don’t think that’s just a sprain.”

  Color rose on Lori’s face as her eyes fell. “I don’t have any money. Can’t you just... set it?”

  Karen rose to her feet, feeling more than a little helpless, more than a little angry. This woman worked, worked hard, and had taken a lot of abuse in a short time. They had a social services rep who would be in Reunion tomorrow afternoon, she thought. “I can contact Marsha Schaeffer, our social serv—”

  “No! No. Never.”

  Though she’d expected pushback, Karen hadn’t expected such a violent reaction. But an assault victim’s emotions could be unpredictable. Processing the unfathomable, to have your own body be violated, was the worst sort of home invasion. “I know it can seem like a handout, but if you need a hand up—or a wrist set, then Medicaid—”

  “Just...no.”

  “Let’s see if Doc Hudson can do it for...” Karen stopped herself. She’d almost said free. “Pro bono.”

  Lori glanced at her wrist. “Pro... bone?”

  “Write it off.”

  The tired face brightened. “Oh. For taxes, you mean?” Fortunately, she took Karen’s tilted head for assent and got to her feet. “Okay. Can we go do that now?”

  “Sure. We can do that.”

  Half an hour later, after Karen had carried out a hurried undertone discussion with the family doctor, Lori sported a new cast on one hand and carried a bottle of painkillers with the other. Even though Karen had had to roust him from his bed, Doc Hudson refused to let her contribute to the cost, saying he’d known Lori since she was a babe and that he was happy to... ha ha... give her a break.

  In the clinic parking lot, the single street light flicked off as dawn shot out fireworks on the far horizon. Karen hesitated. “You sure you’ll be okay, Lori? I can follow you back to the trailer park.”

  “No! No...” Lori cleared her throat. “Thanks. For everything. I’m good. He shook me up, you know, but he didn’t actually... I’m good. And I’ve got to get to... to work.”

  “But your wrist. Doc said to rest it.”

  Lori transferred the painkillers to her jeans and tugged open the dented door of her hatchback. “I got two hands.”

  Karen just hoped she had a fraction of the woman’s resilience. She faced another long day, with a to-do list a mile long, but at least finances weren’t on her radar. Though, come to think of it, she did have to pay some bills. But she was good for it and could afford any late fees.

  Paycheck to paycheck was a hard way to live. Paycheck to nothing, though?

  A killer.

  CHAPTER 29

  As her men gathered into the room at eight o’clock sharp that morning for an incident meeting, Karen dropped down into the well-bottomed armchair that had held only Okerlunds—and would no doubt have been discarded immediately by Bunting for some leather monstrosity with a thousand massage settings. He’d have sacrificed a roster spot to do it, too. In fact, he might have just dispensed with the roster altogether, given Bunting had put out a call for applications—and netted a big fat zero.

  Tilting back, Karen reached out to the short filing cabinet and snapped on the radio on top.

  —your low-power FM out of Reunion, South Dakota. YRUN when you can’t walk? From your legless connection, Rusty ‘Nails’ Nelson. Well, folks, we’ve got some troubling news out of Grove Park this morning. Sheriff Mehaffey contacted me bright and early to give me the rundown.

  All eyes went to her. Marek’s were slitted. She just gestured back toward the radio.

  In the early hours last night, a female park employee was attacked in what is believed to be an attempted sexual assault. Fortunately, her screams brought the park manager and a camper to the rescue, and the attacker fled. However, as you might imagine, after Bunting’s death, this additional attack has escalated concerns that the killer might still be in the park. Turns out, a poacher known simply as Mountain Man has been living there. Sheriff Mehaffey is setting up a search to flush him out and question him. She emphasized that he may well be an innocent man, so keep that in mind. We don’t want any lynching parties. If you wish to take part in the search, meet at the park entrance at one o’clock this afternoon.

  She’d been willing to broadcast that because the low-power FM range didn’t reach the park. Nor did she expect Mountain Man to have a radio. She snapped off her own radio and filled her men in on the details, which didn’t take long. “Comments?”

  Predictably, Walrus was the first to speak. “Mountain Man? Geez. Talk about delusions of grandeur. That park may be the highest point in the Eastern Dakotas—heck, my wife’s family used to own that land—but it’s no mountain. A hill. Barely. I mean, think Black Hills. You ever been to the Rockies? Now those are mountains.”

  So saying, Walrus attacked the hill—nay, mountain—of kolaches on the tray that Kurt had brought, courtesy of his sister, Eva Bechtold. Since Kurt had told Karen that morning he wasn’t going to retire after all, they could continue to enjoy such culinary largesse. Only Two Fingers still hadn’t committed to returning. He was a lone man, standing off to the side, without his swing-shift partner. Bork had gone home to Minnesota to be babied by his mother until he got cleared to return to work.

  “Are you sure it was a sexual assault?” Marek asked into the pastry-gorging.

  Karen blinked at him. “As opposed to what?”

  “Different MO, different type,” he said.

  “You’re suggesting it’s two different people?” Kurt whisked away the tray before Walrus could take another handful. And that went over as well as such things usually did.

  “Indian giver,” Walrus accused his partner.

  Before Walrus end
ed up pinned to his desk by the twin spears of Two Fingers’s glare, Karen stepped in to clue in the clueless. “That was an offensive remark, Deputy Russell.”

  Walrus looked honestly baffled. “Really? Sorry, Two Fingers, but... how? I mean, we gave you guys the Black Hills, then we took it back. Isn’t that what it means? We’re the Indian givers. It’s our bad.”

  “You didn’t give us the Hills. It was already ours. Then you all got gold dust in your eyes. We’re still waiting to get it back.” Some of the glare diminished. “Usually Indian giver is flung at us, because of Native American customs going back to the Pilgrims—when we gave out of our riches, we expected to also receive of yours when you thrived... and got everything taken from us.”

  “Well, okay. I get that. But that’s not the same as I meant...” Seeing Karen’s set face, Walrus subsided back into his stashed kolaches. “Sorry. Truly. No offense meant.”

  Two Fingers granted him absolution with a slight nod.

  Cultural war averted, Karen glanced at her list, which she’d drawn up after driving over from the clinic. The first was, unfortunately, a no-show. “DCI was going to give us an update on their progress this morning, but Larson texted me that he won’t make it until later, so we don’t know yet if there’s any relevant forensic evidence.” Next man up. “Walrus, what do you have for us from the dropbox?”

  His lost kolaches apparently forgotten, Walrus got to his feet and fished out a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Got the names here. And, yeah, the encampment, they weren’t paying, just like Biester said. One completely illegible ticket with the right date, right amount of money. Pretty good deal. Fifteen bucks for all of them a night.”

  Kurt swept crumbs into a trash can. “People expect everything handed to them these days.”

  “Not exactly,” Karen mused. “Fifteen bucks times thirty days in a month is...”

  “Four hundred and fifty,” Marek answered. The man did more in his head than she’d ever done with her pen in school. Near perfect recall, honed by years of learning with his ears—and the reason his mother had refused to believe anything was wrong with him. “That’s more than their trailer rent was at Ted’s.”