by Spencer Kope
Jimmy lets that sink in for a moment before continuing. “We don’t know who this Onion King is, but clearly he’s aware of Murphy’s condition and is taking advantage of it. He’s our real psychopath, the one we need to be concerned about.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Angie asks, “How does Murphy go through life not knowing right from wrong? I mean, if he’s at the store and he sees something he wants, doesn’t he just take it and then get arrested for shoplifting?”
“He does,” Jimmy replies, “and he learns from it. He learns that he can’t take things without paying for them, not because it’s wrong, but because something bad will happen to him if he does.”
He gives Angie an odd smile. “Our locals once had to deal with this guy who was constantly getting arrested for exposing himself and masturbating in public. No one really bothered to find out what this guy’s issue was until one day when a corrections deputy sat down next to him and asked him if he knew why he was in jail. He had no clue, he just knew that the police didn’t like him, and they kept putting him in jail.”
“How do you not know what you’re arrested for?” Nate says. “They have to list your charges when they book you.”
“True, but remember we’re talking about mental illness here. Just because they tell him his charges doesn’t mean he understands them. Fortunately, the corrections deputy in this case recognized that something wasn’t clicking, and she explained to him that there are things you do in private and things you do in public, and that he couldn’t be exposing himself like that in public because it alarmed and offended people.”
“And that did it?” Angie says.
Jimmy gives a long shrug. “Seems so. They never booked him again, at least not for indecent exposure. Once he understood the reason for his repeated arrests, he knew what to avoid. I don’t know that he suddenly understood that it was wrong, not in the way you and I would, but he understood the consequences. Sometimes that’s enough.”
“I guarantee you,” Nate persists, “every wienie-wagger out there knows perfectly well that what they’re doing is wrong; they just like it. It shocks people. It’s how they get off.” He quickly grimaces and adds, “No pun intended.”
Jimmy chuckles. “I get your point, and I know that mental illness is an easy scapegoat when someone gets caught, but not everyone is using it to beat charges. There are some folks out there with some serious issues.” He pushes back in the chair. “I don’t know if you’re seeing the same thing in Clallam County, but mental contacts have shot through the roof all across the country. If it was hereditary I’d expect it to be more consistent. This is something else.”
“Drugs,” Jason says.
“Yeah, meth in particular,” Nate adds. “Fries the brain. I’m seeing guys who I arrested ten years ago who are now twenty-five or thirty years old and they’re having audible and visual hallucinations like you wouldn’t believe. And it’s not from the meth they’re doing now; it’s from the stuff they did ten years ago. The damage is done.”
“Job security, I guess,” Angie says resignedly.
“I’d prefer shoplifters and bicycle thieves,” Jason mutters.
* * *
The heartbreaking futility of our jobs settles over us and leaves us quiet. The soft gurgle of water trickling down the north wall coalesces with the indistinguishable voices of people scattered about the large room and the hum of cars passing on the street outside, creating a pleasant murmur.
I almost wish I could bottle the sound and take it with me.
“Friggin’ Onion King,” Nate finally says, breaking the silence. The randomness of it sets us all to smiling.
“So, what’s our next move?” Jason asks.
“It’s your investigation,” Jimmy replies. “We’re here to follow your lead. If it was me, though”—he turns to Angie—“I would try to keep Murphy’s name off the jail roster when he gets booked.”
She immediately understands his intent. “You want it kept out of the press?”
“If we can, at least until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. We can book him as a John Doe, but that’s only going to be good for seventy-two hours, give or take. Will that work?”
“Perfect.” Turning to Jason, he asks, “How’s your relationship with Bremerton PD?”
The detective sergeant shrugs. “We occasionally have crossover—some of their bad guys coming up here, and vice versa—but it’s not common enough to build first-name relationships. Fortunately, I went to the academy with one of their detectives: Jan Pique. She’s good people. Why do you ask?”
“It’s Murphy’s last known address. Might as well start at the beginning.”
“Right.”
“Do you think your detective friend would mind driving by the place, see what it looks like, maybe make contact if it looks safe? Call it a welfare check or a knock-and-talk; whatever works. We need to know if the other seven women could be there. Make sure she takes backup. In the end, we’ll probably need a warrant to do a proper search.”
“You really think he’d keep the women in town like that?” I ask.
“No, but we can’t afford to be wrong either.”
“Why not see if Murphy will give us consent to search the place?” Nate suggests. “It’s a lot easier than trying to get a warrant later, and, well, he’s right down the hall.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “Normally I’d be right there with you, but in his mental state I can see a defense attorney using that against us.”
“I see your point.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Detective Jan Pique calls with mixed news. The residence on Down Street is actually owned by Murphy’s mother, Gloria Cotton, who lets him live in a run-down fifth-wheel trailer in the backyard.
“We peeked through the windows,” Jan says, “but I couldn’t see much.” Her words sound tinny and truncated as they issue from the phone’s speaker. “The trailer looks like it’s been there for years. Every tire is flat, and it has enough moss on the roof to start its own ecosystem. You want us to try for a warrant?”
“That would be great,” Jason replies. “I’ll have someone email the particulars.”
“Does that mean you’re headed our way?”
“It does, and we’re bringing company.”
“Yeah, who’s that?”
“A couple guys from the FBI’s Special Tracking Unit.”
“Feds,” Jan grumbles in a disenchanted voice. “That’s just great.”
“You’re on speaker,” Jason reminds her.
“Yeah, yeah! Why do you think I’m behaving myself?”
The phone goes dead without a parting word or even a click.
“I think we just found Diane’s long-lost sister,” I whisper to Jimmy.
“I like her already,” he replies.
CHAPTER TEN
It’s after nine when we step out of the hospital and into the dark and cold of the December night. The northeaster that had plagued us throughout the day seems to have settled and lost some of its bluster. It’s now just a gusting breeze, though it still carries winter’s bite. I turn my collar up against it.
We make a beeline for Nate’s SUV and pile inside, Jason riding shotgun.
“What’s the drive time to Bremerton?” Jimmy asks.
“About an hour and a half—provided we don’t get stuck at the Hood Canal Bridge,” Nate says, referring to the floating drawbridge that connects the Kitsap Peninsula with the Olympic Peninsula. “If they have to open, we’ll be stuck for a while, maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes. But I doubt there are many boats on the water right now, and the submarines out of Bangor only transit during daylight … or at least that’s what I’ve heard.”
Jimmy leans purposefully forward between the front seats, resting his elbows next to the headrest on either side. “So … have you guys ever ridden in a Gulfstream?”
* * *
When Betsy lands at Bremerton National Airpor
t twenty-five minutes later, Detective Pique is waiting for us just off the tarmac. Introductions are made, and I get the sense that the Bremerton detective is sizing us up, perhaps deciding whether we’re worth the time and bother. The answer remains shrouded behind her brooding eyes, and she doesn’t seem impressed by the Gulfstream.
“The house is ten minutes from here,” Jan says, motioning us into her vehicle: an unmarked gray Crown Victoria. “By the time we get there we should have a telephonic.”
A telephonic is a search warrant obtained over the phone. It’s an expedited way for an officer to get a warrant after hours or when she can’t appear before the judge in person, usually because she’s at the scene of the crime.
In such a case, she’d prepare her warrant affidavit describing the purpose of the warrant and the location to be searched, just as she would with a regular warrant, but instead of coming before the judge, it would all be done by telephone. After being sworn in, the officer would read her affidavit to the judge word for word. This testimony would likely be recorded and later transcribed, becoming part of the case report.
Procedures vary from state to state, but if the judge finds probable cause to issue the warrant, he directs the officer to sign the judge’s name to either the warrant or a duplicate, including date and time. After that, the warrant is valid and ready to be executed.
“Since it’s just a fifth-wheel, I’m guessing the five of us can handle it,” Jan says with only a hint of sarcasm. “If something comes up and we need extra bodies, I can pull a couple officers from patrol. Detective Sawyer is also available.” She shrugs. “He’s our newest detective; doesn’t actually start in his new position until the first of January.” In a guiltless monotone, she adds, “I kind of promised him that he could tag along if he did the warrant paperwork.”
“You’re bad,” Nate says with an appreciative shake of his head.
“Only on Sundays,” the detective shoots back.
* * *
The single-story home on Down Street is dated but well maintained. The lawn is cut and edged, the paint is several years old but still fresh, and the whole place has a well-scrubbed look and feel, as if it had just been photographed for an edition of a vintage homes magazine.
After we ring the doorbell and present the warrant, Gloria Cotton escorts us around the side of the house, through the cedar gate, and into a world very different from the one at the front of the house. The fenced and gated backyard is clearly the realm of Murphy Cotton, and the embarrassment on his mother’s face is prominent and without excuse.
“The boy’s a slob,” she says flatly.
After pulling a long drag from her cigarette, she drops the spent butt to the ground and grinds it out with her heel. “God knows I’ve tried,” she adds, leaving some question as to what she tried. Perhaps she tried teaching him how to clean up after himself, or how to water the grass, or put the trash in the trash can. Perhaps she tried teaching him to be responsible. Or maybe what Gloria really meant was, God knows, I tried teaching him not to lock strange women in his trunk.
Without further comment, she leaves us to our task, apparently uninterested in what we’ll find in her son’s trailer. She turns on the outside light and enters the house through the back door, letting the aluminum screen door bang closed behind her.
* * *
Murphy’s world is one of bare earth marked with the occasional patch of dead grass. Scattered about are empty beer cans, a well-used burn barrel, and mounds of junk electronics separated into piles: two piles for old CPUs, one for old-school boxy monitors, one for keyboards and speakers, and one for miscellaneous items like old Xbox units and DVD players.
Along the fence on the south side of the backyard, lined up as if still taking up space on the floor of a busy arcade, are seven coin-operated video games. From the look of them, they’ve been there for years, and are ruined beyond repair due to prolonged exposure to the elements. Behind the trailer is a 1991 Dodge pickup, and, like the trailer itself, all the tires are flat and moss has collected on the roof and in the corners of the bed.
There’s more, of course, tossed here and there and stacked in corners: bicycle frames and old toasters and forty-year-old generators.
“What a dump,” Nate mutters.
“I was going to say junkyard,” I offer, “but dump works just fine.”
Murphy’s world is a solitary dump. Aside from Detective Pique and presumably her partner, the only recent shine I can see is that of himself and his mother, and she never seems to venture very far from the back door. The rest of the tracks are old, from maybe five or six years ago. If Murphy has friends, they haven’t been to visit in at least that long. More importantly, if he’s holding seven women captive, he’s either keeping them elsewhere or he brought them here long ago.
Still, we have to check.
Rattling the battered door handle to the fifth-wheel, Nate finds it locked. “Boss,” he says to Jason, “you got your kit?”
The detective sergeant moves forward while fishing a soft vinyl case from his pocket. He extracts a tension wrench and rake pick from the lock-picking kit and goes to work on the pin tumbler in the trailer’s door. Twenty seconds later he gives the handle a twist, and the door pulls open.
“Open sesame,” Nate mutters with a little awe. Before entering, he makes the sign of the cross, as if blessing the trailer or warding off evil spirits, then he steps through the door—and immediately retreats, gagging. “Holy hell!” he barks, gasping for breath and waving his hand in front of his mouth and nose, as if that’s going to help. “Smells like month-old garbage in there.”
“Move over,” Jason grumbles, pushing past Nate, who’s now bent over with both hands on his knees looking like he’s about to dry-heave. Positioning himself in front of the open door, Jason takes three deep breaths and holds the last. Rushing into the trailer, he slides open the side window to the right of the door, and then another farther down. As he’s working on the window on the opposite side, we hear him exhale loudly, no longer able to contain the breath. This is immediately followed by an involuntary intake of putrid air, and then a shaking, grumbling quiver of disgust rattles through his body, no doubt urging him to flee.
But Jason pushes on.
We hear him open a third window, and then the big window at the front of the trailer, followed by two more at the rear. When he emerges through the door a moment later, his face has a pasty, flaccid look to it, and though the temperature is near freezing, a sheen of sweat seems to lay upon his skin.
“Let’s give it a few minutes to air out,” he croaks.
* * *
Ten minutes later the trailer still stinks, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Jimmy has his kit with him—a bag containing essentials for any investigation—so he digs around in the bottom and finds a small vial of peppermint oil. Measuring out a single drop on the tip of his finger, he rubs it under his nose and hands the bottle off to me. After doing the same, I offer the vial to Nate, and then snap on a double set of gloves.
The garbage smell is still present when I step up into the trailer, but the peppermint does a good job of masking it, or at least taking the edge off the pungent stench. Jimmy moves to the front of the trailer, which I suppose you could classify as the bedroom, so I begin my search in the kitchenette, opening cupboards and drawers.
Moving to the small refrigerator, I say a silent prayer that there are no body parts inside, and then jerk the door open. Bottles rattle and clank together on the door shelves, and I find that the fridge is mostly full, but there’s nothing foul inside except two moldy pieces of old pizza and a jug of expired milk … and maybe the Chinese food.
Nate is at the back of the trailer and I notice in my peripheral vision that he seems immobile, as if rooted in place. Casting a glance his way, I note that he’s standing with his hands on his hips in front of the table and bench seats that seem to serve as both dining room and living room. He’s staring at the clustered piles of clothing and junk
that obscure the table’s dated Formica surface, perhaps wondering where to begin.
“What a sty,” I hear him grumble.
The bench seats on the left and right of the table are stacked almost to the ceiling with a nonsensical collection of randomness: clothes, keyboards, a box of empty wine bottles, books on biology, electronics, and physics, at least five ping-pong paddles, an ant farm—thankfully empty—and dozens of newspapers.
And that’s just the outer layer.
The table itself is filled at the back with several feet of the same, as if the piles from the left and the right had just spilled over, but the front of the table is relatively clear, leaving room for what appears to be a makeshift workstation.
A partially disassembled PlayStation 3 rests in this space. Its case has been cracked open and the power supply and disk drive have been removed and set to the side, leaving the green motherboard exposed. A set of miniature screwdrivers, a heat gun, a multimeter, several jumper wires with crocodile clips, and a tube of thermal paste are scattered around the project.
The small workstation is the only spot in the trailer that shows any sign of thoughtful placement or cleanliness. It’s the eye of the hurricane, the calm in a storm of disorder, an oddity. One might even say it was an accident if not for the single folding metal chair that occupies the spot directly in front of the station. Despite the clutter under and around the table, Murphy managed to leave enough room to push the chair all the way in. Out of the way, yet always there for him.
Nate stands silently, surveying the mess and snapping absently at the latex of his gloves, perhaps wondering if two layers are enough—or if any number of layers would be enough for such a toxic dump. Bracing up, he gives a heavy sigh and starts picking at the pile.
With the trailer’s limited space, Jan and Jason remain outside, busying themselves by checking the hatches and storage compartments accessible from the exterior. These yield nothing of interest, though Jason swears he saw a rat in one of them.