'Can you give me the numbers? I'll send over some officers to her residence.'
'You bet.' Tarpin fished through his pockets. 'Have a pencil?'
Decker handed him his notepad and pen.
'I hope this isn't any kind of vendetta. They've worked with all kinds of unbalanced teenagers.' Tarpin scribbled down numbers. 'This is her pager, this one's the cell phone, this is the office, and the residence.'
Decker reclaimed his pad and pen, then dialed from his cell phone - dead in the wilds. 'I'll have to use the mike in the SUV. This isn't working in this range.'
Two murdered, one missing.
Decker said, 'All the rest of the camp's boys are accounted for, Corporal Tarpin?'
'Yes.' Tarpin turned his head and spit on the ground. 'Are you going to question them?'
'I'd like to.'
'It wasn't one of them. None of them could pull this off and be so quiet about it. I didn't hear a damn thing. Besides, these boys here are rank amateurs. The Baldwins don't take the hardened juvenile cases in their camp. Too much risk.'
'What did these boys do to bring them here?'
'Petty stuff... or just acting out with Mama and Papa. They're on the wrong track, but when push comes to shove, they're basically spoiled, rich-kid pussies. They think they're tough, but wouldn't last a week on the mean streets.' Tarpin's bald head was sweating. 'He deals with other kids, more disturbed kids. You might want to start looking there.'
'I'll start with these boys.' Decker walked toward the Jeep to make his calls. 'Mainly because they're here and so am I.'
Tarpin dogged him. 'They didn't do it. They're all like Ernesto. You think a kid like Ernesto could have done that?' He answered his own question. 'Not a chance. None of them could do it. You'll see when you talk to them.'
Decker opened the door to the four-wheel drive. 'I have every intention of doing that just as soon as I put in the call to find Dee Baldwin - the living before the dead, Corporal.'
He didn't need to go inside to know what had happened. The ground was veined with streaks of blood, oozing out from under the bottom of the waterproof dome. Several bloody partials of shoeprints formed a trail from the door flap to the edge of the drop. Decker chalked them and looked over the escarpment. No continuing trail down the mountainside as far as he could see, but that meant nothing. Someone would have to climb down there and check it out, because from the way it looked, it appeared that the shoeprint went over the edge. Weird, but not impossible.
Gingerly, he trod on the dusty ground below, watching where he stepped. He opened the door flap and lowered his head. Then, trying not to breathe too deeply, he peeked inside.
The wind of death registered first. It stank of blood and guts,
reeking like the back of a butcher shop. The stretched fabric walls had been bombarded with splatter marks; on the ground were puddles of crimson and brown plasma. There once was a double bedroll, but now it was a blotter of blood-soaked sheets. The two bodies lay on the ground, side by side, both doubled over. No arms hiding their faces: they didn't even have enough time to assume protective positions. Ernesto had been bare-chested; Baldwin had on an undershirt. The rest of the clothes lay in a heap near the entrance to the tent.
Decker closed his eyes in order to think. A tinge of nausea made pinpricks in his stomach, but he swallowed it down. If the victims' state of dress implied that this meeting had been more than just therapy, it put a different cast on Dee Baldwin's disappearance. Was she running from the bad guys or hiding from the cops? Or maybe she had just gone grocery shopping at seven in the morning.
He opened his eyes. The scene did not improve. The faces were bluish white and streaked with blood. They had been shot repeatedly and, from the bullet holes that dotted the bodies, they'd been shot impulsively. No execution-style shooting, this was rage, giving full meaning to the word overkill. Exit holes from the shells had made Swiss cheese out of the tent walls. Judging by the sizes of the apertures, the weapon was probably a.32-caliber. The assailant must have had a silencer, because otherwise there would have been lots of noise. If the couple had been awake and had been seized with such firearm force, there would be no way for them to fight back. If they had been asleep, they wouldn't have known what had hit them.
The coroner would determine a range for the time of death. In this case, Decker's knowledge as a detective would be just as accurate. The bodies were still warm. At this elevation, things cooled off at night. The murders appeared more recent than not.
If Tarpin was innocent and to be believed, he didn't hear anything. Which meant it happened in the deepest part of the sleep cycle - usually two hours before wake-up. If Tarpin said he
woke around five, the murders probably took place sometime around or after three.
From three to five...
Where was Dee Baldwin?
He closed the flap and gave himself a moment to catch his breath while scanning for details. In the last few minutes, Webster, Martinez, and Bontemps had surfaced. Martinez was writing in his notepad, but stopped when he saw Decker. The trio walked over, Webster saying, 'How bad is it?'
'It's awful.' Decker turned to Bontemps.
Before he could talk, Webster broke in. 'I called Wanda down because she was involved with Golding in the vandalism case. I thought if this was another hate crime, a bigger hate crime, she should be here.'
'It's a hate crime, but not a "hate" crime,' Decker said. 'But it's good that Wanda's here. We could use someone in Juvenile since the majority of our suspects are under eighteen.'
They all regarded the stunned teenagers.
Decker said, 'Let's divide the kids into two groups according to their ages. The ones over eighteen can be questioned. As far as the minors, we can't do much without parental consent. Get their names and phone numbers, and start contacting the parents. You can also ask them very casually if they heard or saw anything, and judge their reaction.
'But remember that we're working with a different population here. They're all going to look like they're trying to hide something, because that's their normal behavior. They're fuck-ups. They've got years of experience masking guilt or shifting the blame. We're looking for something out of the ordinary.'
Webster said, 'Y'all really think one them did it and stuck around to be questioned?'
Martinez said, 'Maybe we have a real psycho in our midst.'
Bontemps looked at the motley crew. 'That very well could be.'
'I'm going to see if I can get Tarpin's permission to open up the kids' knapsacks,' Decker said. 'When the parents placed their
kids in the program, they explicitly gave Tarpin and Baldwin permission to do random checks of their personal possessions for drugs and contraband.'
'This is sounding familiar,' Webster said.
'I realize that,' Decker answered.
'Who's Tarpin?' Martinez asked.
'The dude in the camouflage,' Decker said.
'He looks like he could do some damage. What's his role in the camp?' Martinez asked. 'Boot kicker?'
'Chief Nature Master,' Decker said. 'The activity coordinator. I think he does everything except the actual talking therapy.'
'Why does the name Tarpin ring a bell?' Webster said.
'You're right,' Martinez stated. 'But I can't place it. What's his gimmick? Is he a survivalist expert or something?'
'Probably.'
'That's it! Wanda looked up with triumphant glee on her face. 'Remember the Preservers of Ethnic Integrity? Darrell Holt and Erin Kershan?'
'Yeah, yeah!' Webster said. 'The flyers they were printin' up!'
'Tarpin's name was on it!' Martinez said. 'He was the English Only guy.'
'This is sounding very familiar,' Wanda remarked.
Decker raised his eyebrows. 'The flyer should be in the original case file. I'll look at them later.'
Wanda said, 'At the time we didn't have anything to connect the Preservers of Ethnic Integrity to Golding and the temple vandalism. I don't know if T
arpin and Golding knew each other before this tragedy, but it would be interesting to find out.'
'Whatever happened to that other racist kid? The hacker.' Decker snapped his fingers. 'Ricky Moke. Or whatever his name really is. Wasn't he also a supposed survivalist?'
'I think that's how Darrell and Erin saw him,' Wanda said.
'Graduate of Mervin Baldwin's program?' Martinez asked.
'Let's check it out.' Decker paused. 'In the immediate, I'd sure like to locate Baldwin's wife. She's not at her house or at the clinic, and that's making me nervous. I gave the go-ahead for
immediate entrance on the grounds of immediate danger to her welfare, but then we had to retreat from the premises. I'm trying to get a court-ordered search warrant, especially for Baldwin's clinic. Tarpin suggested some kind of vendetta. Maybe something'll pop up in his case files.'
Martinez said, 'Aren't his case files confidential?'
'Not if someone's in imminent danger.' Decker paused. 'A crazy patient coming back to get you. What's the likelihood of that? Probably as likely as old criminals coming back to hunt us down.'
'It happens,' Martinez said.
'Not very often. Know what the most dangerous occupation for that kind of thing is? Law. People get real pissed at lawyers. Anyway, I don't know for certain if Dee Baldwin is in imminent danger. As a matter of fact, she just might be the perp.' Decker described the scene inside the hut. 'A wife finding her husband and a kid in that kind of pose, I could see her going into a rage.'
'I dunno, Loo,' Martinez said. 'You think the camp shrink would have a homosexual affair with a minor with all these kids and Tarpin and his wife hanging around?'
Wanda said, 'Maybe Dee paid him a surprise visit.'
'At three in the morning?'
'At three in the morning, it would really be a surprise visit,' Wanda said. 'And that's why she waited. She had suspicions. Wives know that kind of thing. She wanted to catch him when he least expected it.'
Decker said, 'That could explain the premeditation aspect of this crime. The murderer had to have used a silencer. Otherwise, he or she or they would have woken up the entire camp. She comes up here with a gun and a purpose...' Decker thought a moment. 'She would have had to use a vehicle to get up here. So somewhere among these umpteen tire tracks would be an impression that matches her vehicle. So let's get a casting on every single tire print here and let's say a... half-mile radius, assuming she might have parked a ways down so as not to create too much noise. Wanda, you chalk off every single tire track you
see, and have the techs do the plaster work.'
She frowned. 'That's gonna take up a lot of time.' 'Yes, it will,' Decker said. 'You have a problem with that?' 'Uh, no, sir, not at all.'
'Good. Tom and Bert will help you after they're done. Tom, you take the older kids - which'll take time because the questioning will be more involved. Bert, you take the information on the minor kids and also, you handle Tarpin because you've been in the service. He claims to be a Marine... mentioned something about Serbia and Rwanda. To me, Tarpin looks like a mercenary. I'll call Oliver to do a background check on him. I've got to call on Jill and Carter Golding before they hear the news from somewhere else. Of course, if anyone wants to switch places... ?' Silence.
'Thought not.' Decker squinted into the hot sun, felt its fire spitting in his face. It was shaping up to be one hell of a day.
16
They had to have known something was really wrong, because if it had just been another minor run-in with the law, Decker wouldn't have come in person. But there was no way for them to expect news as bad as this. And there was no palatable way for Decker to deliver it.
Standing like a robot, witnessing all the horror, shock, and pain known only to other grieving parents - the screams, the sobs, the sudden clutching of the breast. The father trying to comfort the mother, the mother refusing all of it. Then came the immediate denial.
You must be mistaken.
Are you sure?
You could have made a mistake.
How can you be certain?
You're wrong!
But Decker was not wrong. This part never got easier. He only
got older.
At first, they would hate him because he had told them the unspeakable. Then, a week would pass... two weeks... a month. They would come to view him as the link, the one who would impart some logic into the madness, their conduit to the investigation, the one they could call, yell at, scream at, cry with. Eventually a relationship would grow - maybe a symbiotic one, maybe an antagonistic one - but some kind of relationship.
Still standing at the doorway - because no one had invited him
in yet - Decker spoke in short sentences. Even so, his words weren't registering.
Jill's eyes had turned feral. She hissed when she spoke. 'You didn't know him all that well. You could have made a mistake.'
Decker said, 'Maybe we should all go inside.'
They stared back at him: Jill with her red, pinched nose dripping clear snot all over her green sweats, and Carter, pale green in complexion and stymied by shock. He was dressed in a work shirt and jeans. Decker lowered his head, attempting to cross the threshold. Passively, they split ranks and let him enter. Carter immediately fell into a chair, battling a bad case of nausea, dropping his head between his knees. But it was Jill who made the sudden run for the bathroom. They could both hear her retching.
Carter whispered, 'How do you know? How are you certain?'
'The camp's coordinator - Corporal Tarpin - positively identified him.'
'Oh, God!' Tears flowed down the man's cheeks. 'But just maybe he made a mistake?'
Pleading, begging. It was pure pathos, heart wrenching.
'I'm afraid not, Mr Golding. I saw him as well.'
More awful silence. The questions would come. Slowly at first, then they'd barrage him, getting angrier at each query. It was a pattern that Decker was all too familiar with.
Carter said, 'I'm grateful I was home.'
Talking from a male perspective. He had been there to take care of his wife. Carter didn't know what Decker knew, that she wouldn't want his care and she wouldn't want his protection. What she wanted was her son back, and since she couldn't have that, he was of no use to her at this time.
Carter looked up. 'At least she didn't hear it alone.' A pause. 'You're sure?'
'I'm sure.'
Carter pointed to a chair.
Decker sat.
'What...' That was all he could get out.
'Perhaps we should wait for your wife. She'll want to know, sir. She'll have to know.'
Carter didn't argue. And eventually Jill did return, with mottled white skin and shaking hands.
Carter said, 'He was going to tell...'
Silence.
She bit her lip as tears rushed from her eyes. Then she nodded
quickly.
Short and simple. Decker said, 'Right now, this is confidential. Dr Baldwin was also murdered. They were found together in a double bedroll.'
Jill looked up and covered her mouth as her eyes widened. 'Oh, my God!' Breathing hard. 'Oh, my dear God! Together?'
Decker nodded.
'So where was Mervin?' Carter said. 'Are you implying that he
did it?'
Decker nearly kicked himself, realizing his error. 'Mr Carter, it was Mervin who was murdered. It's Dee Baldwin who's missing.'
Carter stood up, full of venom. 'Just what are you saying.'
'I'm just telling you what we saw—'
'You didn't see anything!' Carter yelled. 'Furthermore, I don't care what the hell you saw, I'm telling you it's impossible! I know Ernesto enough to know that what you're saying is pure bullshit! Someone is trying to discredit my son and I want to know why!'
More than discredit. Someone had murdered his son. Dad appeared more outraged by the inference of his son's homosexuality than the actual murder. But that was only because the diversion was easier to digest.
'W
hy would someone do such a thing!' Carter was still screaming. He shook a finger at Decker. 'This is... this is...' And then he melted, sinking into a chair. He laid his head in his hands and wept openly. His wife watched with wet eyes, still shaking and still ashen. She observed him without comforting him. It was horrible to watch. Decker knew if he spoke, the man would stop crying. But that wasn't to anyone's advantage. He let him go for a few more moments, then said, 'I don't know what
happened, sir. But I will find out what happened.'
Faye Kellerman - Decker 13 - The Forgotten Page 14
