Spirit Lake

by Vickie McKeehan

  She chuckled at her own joke. “No way he’d look for them in there. He doesn’t do a thing around here while I’m at work, except maybe complain. He calls me at least five times a day while I’m at the clinic, grumbling about the food I buy. Plus, he refuses to do a single chore I give him. Not once has he lifted a finger since he’s been here. I’m sick of it. I want him gone.”

  “Where is he now?” Lando asked.

  “I don’t know. He sleeps all day and prowls around all night. What brought you guys here anyway? Not that I’m sorry you came.”

  “Gemma mentioned your nephew had issues. Plus, I’m trying to find out who’s been breaking into houses around town and doing all kinds of mischief. Does that sound like something Kirby might be responsible for doing?”

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  Luke came back with the ice and a cold washcloth for her bruised face.

  “That might be putting a pretty spin on Kirby’s behavior. My sister, Georgia, wasn’t exactly honest with me when I agreed he could come stay here. Had I known about Kirby’s violent temper, I never would have made the offer. I remember a little boy who was a lot nicer than he is now.”

  “Mind if I take a few pictures of the mess in here? For evidence,” Lando stated.

  “If it’ll help get Kirby out of my life, knock yourself out.”

  “Will you press charges, Ginny?”

  “After today? You bet I will. Just tell me what I need to do.”

  “Give me Kirby’s description. A picture would be better. I can arrest him for assault and battery. I’ll handle the warrant end. You let Luke take care of that lip. It’s getting bigger by the minute.”

  Enid’s greenhouse was her pride and joy, something her late husband Henry had built with his own two hands. It stood in disarray, delicate orchids overturned and knocked out of their containers. A variety of hybrid lilies, tulips, and carnations had been ruined and turned upside down, some even thrown up against the wall, shattering their pretty planters into pieces.

  The elderly woman looked rattled. “I found it like this when I got back from my rounds. Never ever thought to lock the door before tonight.”

  Looking at the damage to Enid’s prize flowers made Gemma’s blood boil. Whoever had done this had shredded the older woman’s prized orchids on purpose and ruined all Enid’s hard work, a fact that set her back at least six months.

  She slipped her arms around the woman’s slumped shoulders. Enid Lloyd looked defeated and Gemma was there to cheer her up. Try as she might, at the moment, she was having a hard time coming up with anything positive to say. There wasn’t a single plant left on the tables. Every color of flower littered the concrete floor. “At least he didn’t break the windows in here.”

  Enid ran her hands through her gray hair. “I’m just sick about it. Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “I’m guessing meanness and too much time on their hands,” Gemma replied. “I’ll help you clean this mess up. Not that it will bring back your flowers.”

  “I’ll have to start over from scratch. Orchids are finicky. They need just the right amount of humidity and water. You can’t grow them around avocados or even peaches or apples. It’s the ethylene from the fruit they don’t like. And when you treat them like this...”

  Gemma noticed Enid had tears in her eyes. She bent to pick up one of the long, willowy stems already wilting from being out of the pots so long and spotted nodes sprouting in an exact replica of the mother plant. “Maybe we can salvage the babies. See these, there are plenty that have plantlets. I’m guessing over three dozen or so.”

  Enid perked up. “Keiki. Hawaiian for baby or little one. Replanting the babies. That’s an idea. We could treat them like starters.”

  “Exactly. Got an extra pair of gardening gloves handy?”

  “You bet. But it’s so late. Don’t you have to get home to Lando?”

  “Lando’s out chasing the guy who did this.”

  Enid’s face broke out into a smile. “Bless his heart. Then we shouldn’t stand around here wasting another minute letting that jerk win.”

  With the light of a half moon, Lando drove through the streets looking for a guy who fit Kirby’s description. Five-nine. Brown hair. Goofy-looking face and ears that stuck out.

  He’d been at it for more than two hours when he spotted a man crouching in the bushes under an open window on Mermaid Place.

  It was the Benningtons’ house, Lando noted as he pulled his cruiser to a stop. Drummond and Grace Bennington were a young couple who’d just had their second baby.

  Getting out of the car as quietly as he could, Lando approached the man with caution. “Mind telling me what you’re doing peering into that window? Peeping and trespassing are against the law in these parts.”

  The guy took off running.

  Lando let out a sigh and took out his Taser with a fifteen-foot reach. Aiming it at Kirby’s back, he watched the peeper fall to the ground, unable to move for several long minutes.

  Lando waited for the twitching to begin before he moved closer and used his flashlight to light up the guy’s face. His eye coloring and general description fit Kirby Doss. “You still gonna run or talk to me man to man?”

  “Help me up.”

  “Show me some ID first.”

  “I don’t have to show you nothin’.”

  Lando thought he caught the chords of a Missouri twang in the sarcastic response. “I’m only gonna ask you one more time before I cuff you and place you under arrest.”

  “For what? I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Really? So you just happened to be walking down the street and decided to cross the Benningtons’ yard to spy into their bedroom window? That sounds kind of pervy to me. ID. Now.”

  Sitting on the ground, the guy’s hands began to shake as he removed his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a driver’s license.

  “Kirby Alan Doss, Joplin’s a long way from here. What brings you to Coyote Wells?”

  “I’m staying with my aunt.”

  “Would that be the same aunt you attacked about five hours ago?”

  “Attacked? You’re dreamin’. She just tripped and fell on her own stupid feet.”

  “No, you punched her in the face,” Lando amended, yanking Kirby to his feet. He pulled out his handcuffs and slapped them on the guy’s wrists. “I have photos if you’d like to take a look. She’s being treated by a doctor in case you’re interested. Are you the one who’s been doing all the B&E in my town?”

  “I’m not sayin’ another word.”

  “Fine by me. You’ll at least get a bed for the night. Maybe for longer.”

  “Hey, I’m supposed to get a phone call.”

  “That, too. But you should know the judge is on vacation for another week. July in Coyote Wells people take their summer trips. This is a small town, Mr. Doss. We have one judge who presides over bail hearings. Budget cuts. That means you’ll probably be our guest until Annette Ferris gets back from her honeymoon down Mexico way.”

  “What? That’s not right.”

  “Neither is hitting your aunt. Don’t look to her to bail you out, either. So let’s move it, sport. I need to get you booked then get back home to my wife.”

  Wife? Lando didn’t bother correcting the sentiment as he settled Doss into the cruiser for the ride to jail. It felt like he and Gemma were already married. That was a good thing, right?

  Once he reached the station, Jimmy Fox met him at the door. “This the punk who beat up Ginny Sue?”

  “Yup. And probably broke into at least two dozen houses from here to the Rez. Plus, Gemma’s trying to help Enid recover all the plants he destroyed. We need to tally up the damage from that little escapade.”

  “Yeah, well, Enid told me the orchids were slated to be part of your wedding.”

  Doss suddenly became interested. “Hey, I thought you said you were already married. You got a girlfriend on the side?”

  Lando cut his eyes to Ginny’
s smart-mouthed nephew. “Right now, you’d better worry about coming up with bail money and restitution. Or you might be spending a lot longer here than you want. Get him out of my sight, Jimmy. After you book him, send his fingerprints to the state crime lab for comparison to what we have on file in the other break-ins. And coordinate that with Zeb’s office. He has palm prints to go with it. I’ll be down the hall if you need me completing his paperwork.”

  Lando worked another two hours until he looked up to see Gemma standing in his doorway.

  “Hey, you ready to call it a night?”

  “Past ready. Did you get a look at the guy who ruined your garden?”

  “You know me too well, don’t you? I peeked in on him from the hallway. Jimmy said he beat up Ginny Sue.”

  “Left her with a busted lip and a knot on her forehead. And I caught him peeping, which I plan to add to the charges.” He held up a piece of paper. “The list is getting longer. Twenty-one counts of B&E. Prowling on private property. Peeking while loitering. Vandalism. Destruction of property.”

  “What a creepy guy. How’s Ginny doing?”

  “Luke gave her a shot and sent her to bed. How’s Enid?”

  “Better now. We repotted almost forty baby plants. Let’s hope they make it.” She sat down in his lap, rested her head on his shoulder. “You should’ve let me know you got the guy. Enid would’ve gone to bed feeling a lot safer.”

  “Sorry. But I needed to get this stuff done before morning, write the report while everything was fresh in my mind.”

  “Translation. You needed to do it while you were still pissed.”

  He grinned. “That too. Let’s go home. My brain can’t think any more.”

  “It isn’t your brain I need right now.”

  He nibbled her neck. “Jimmy’s right down the hall.”

  “Then what are we still doing hanging around here?”

  3

  The reservation spanned a hundred-acre tract and bridged the gap to forestland, mountains, and a beautiful lake sandwiched in the middle.

  Even as a kid, Gemma had loved coming to this serene section of California. Never in a million years did she think then that she might in some way contribute to solving a murder case.

  But she started her morning standing outside Zeb Longhorn’s office, waiting for the tribal police chief to finish up a phone call.

  When his door finally opened, he stuck his head out. “Want coffee? We have one of those fancy coffee machines that can put foam on the top.”

  “Who could turn that down?” Gemma quipped, stepping into his technologically modern surroundings.

  “I’ll go fix us each a cup. The file’s out on my desk if you want to get started.”

  She smiled. No small talk for Zeb. Dutifully, she sifted through the file that belonged to Chloe Pendleton. From the looks of the notes and reports, Zeb had done everything possible to find the young woman’s killer, only to hit a brick wall.

  Hikers had found the twenty-year-old’s body, still fully clothed, on the shores of Spirit Lake two miles inside the Rez, a stone’s throw from Fire Mountain and Zeb’s own back door. He’d gotten there within twenty minutes of the initial call to take charge of the crime scene. It had been his investigation from that point forward.

  “Chloe was strangled,” Zeb said quietly, as he appeared holding two steaming cups of frothy latte. “Her hyoid bone had been snapped. I even got the FBI involved because I was sure she’d been kidnapped. The Pendletons were convinced she wouldn’t have left her shift at the store without telling someone. And she left behind her vehicle, a beat-up old Ford Ranger pickup.”

  “Parents don’t always know what their kids are up to,” Gemma pointed out. “A friend could’ve talked her into leaving.”

  “Yeah, but an out-of-town girl from Reno found dead more than four hundred miles from home, taken across state lines, I don’t buy it. That’s reason enough to think the FBI should get involved.”

  “Just playing devil’s advocate.” But Gemma chewed her lip as she read over the file. “I see here the FBI even sent out an agent who worked the case for a week. That wasn’t for very long. Is that short amount of time routine?”

  “The agent moved on to a bigger, higher profile case--a terrorist threat at the Oakland International Airport. I was lucky to get the guy to hang around for a week. After that, I was on my own. It was my first murder case, Gemma,” Zeb admitted while staring out the window behind his desk. “It’s been five years now, a cold case that still haunts me to this day. After all this time, I still don’t know why a convenience store clerk from Reno was murdered in my neck of the woods.”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t dumped?”

  “I’m positive. There were signs of a struggle near the body. She’d been attacked right there ten yards from the water. By the time the hikers came along she’d been dead for less than an hour.”

  “That would make her killed at…” She shuffled through the papers until she found what she was looking for. “Ten that morning.”

  “The killer either brought her there to kill her on purpose or had an argument with her that got out of hand.”

  “And she had no known connection to the area, no relatives living here that she wanted to see, no one she’d come to visit?”

  “Nope. The Pendletons told me they’d never even heard of this area before their daughter was found here. Plus, I canvassed the entire Rez, as well as the town. Everyone I spoke to denied knowing her or even seeing her in the area.”

  “Okay, I have questions. Could Chloe have left voluntarily and started hitching, ending up out on I-5 and the killer picked her up along the route to get somewhere else?”

  “No. Chloe went missing from the convenience store. The killer tampered with the surveillance camera so he wouldn’t be seen on video.”

  “Ah. Interesting. Then I wonder why the killer didn’t simply take her out into the water, tie her down and make the body disappear.”

  “I have a theory about that. The killer didn’t have a boat handy. If he simply tosses her into the lake, she’s just gonna resurface onto shore at some point. He didn’t bother with it.”

  “Or, he was interrupted, leaving her there wearing her clothes and with a photo ID in her jeans pocket. He didn’t plan on doing that. Were there any tire tracks left at the scene?”

  “A faint trace but the casting was no help at all, not deep enough. I kept the photos in the file just in case, though, and sent the actual plaster cast to the FBI. My best guess at the time was that the tire impression came from a sporty little foreign job.”

  “Like you said, it’s so weird that we have an out-of-town girl--with no ties to the area--ending up dead at the lake, murdered in broad daylight at ten in the morning.”

  She tapped her fingers on Zeb’s desk. “Don’t you agree it’s odd that there’s no apparent sexual assault?”

  Zeb nodded. “Chloe wasn’t raped. The coroner found no signs of that whatsoever.”

  “Exactly. Which means we have to figure out what she was doing here and why the killer brought her to Spirit Lake. Something keeps recycling through my brain. I can’t get past the fact that she’s in the same general area as the Louise Rawlins armored car heist. Don’t forget there was a Reno connection to that. It’s where it all started, where Aaron Barkley and Louise planned the entire thing. There were Reno locals involved.” She stood up and went to the map Zeb had hanging on his wall. With her finger, she followed a direct line from the point of the robbery to Spirit Lake. “You’re talking less than two miles from where the armored car was boxed in. Is it possible that Chloe Pendleton or someone she knew had ties to that heist? Did you check to see if any of Chloe’s relatives had a connection to any of the conspirators?”

  Zeb quickly jotted that down on his notepad. “No, but I can certainly run with that lead. It’s more than I had before.”

  Gemma waited and then went on with her thoughts. “As I see it, it’s either one of two things. The girl was eithe
r kidnapped from her shift at the store or she comes here willingly with her killer without mentioning this trip to her family. Maybe that explains the no-rape scenario. Either way, she makes a wrong decision and ends up dead.”

  “So are you getting anything? From the file?”

  Gemma sighed. “You won’t like it, and my guess is, neither will Lando. It’s out of left field. But I’m talking serial killer here.”

  Zeb brought his chair upright. “What? No way. Where did that leap come from?”

  “Now you sound like Lando. But you did ask. You’re getting my gut instinct. I think the same person who murdered Lando’s Jane Doe murdered your Chloe.”

  Zeb looked confused. “I’m not following the logic. Jane Doe was found completely nude, without a stitch of clothing, not a sock, not even a ring on her finger. Chloe was found fully clothed, ID in her pocket. Lando’s Jane Doe was sexually assaulted. Chloe didn’t show signs of assault. Not to mention the murders were twenty-five years apart. Where’s the connection, Gemma?”

  She gave him a pitiful look. “I understand the skepticism. I do. But do you ever wonder why law enforcement has so many unsolved homicides that have grown cold?”

  “What’s that got to do with me? If you’re about to insult me…”

  “Sort of, but it isn’t personal. You law enforcement types always focus on the same method or motive. But the truth is, a savvy killer who goes uncaught for decades is likely to change up those two things and shake up his way of doing things. What’s the connection? The common denominator? Both of these girls were strangled, their hyoid bones broken. What are the chances that two different killers picked the same area to leave their victims in plain sight as if they wanted the bodies found? What are the odds that this happens in such a small town like ours, an area that’s not that populated?”

  Zeb scratched his jawline. “But if you’re right, which I’m far from convinced that you are, it means the killer is a local. It means he was here to kill Jane Doe thirty years ago and then did the same thing to Chloe twenty-five years later.”