The Corpse at the End of the Chapter

by Karen Hayes

  “Jack Jackson.”

  “Right. They must be best buds or something. Jackson has represented him in all of these cases, which started the very first year he worked for the prison as a guard. Same judge each time, too.”

  “The same judge? Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Very,” Jones said. “Something smells here.” He reached for his phone. “I think I need to let the DA in on this.”

  He read more about Sargent as they waited for the DA to get there. It didn’t take long, but Jones was able to find out quite a bit about Sargent’s ex-wife in the meantime. She had been murdered twenty-two years earlier while Sargent was, he said, on vacation in Canada. He was alone, fishing, on some obscure island in the middle of a lake in British Columbia. The wife was murdered in Crescent City, California, and the Crescent City police wanted to extradite him, but he had the same lawyer, and the same judge said no to the extradition, citing insufficient evidence.

  He updated the District Attorney, Marvin Durham, on what he had found.

  “What about the daughter?” Durham asked.

  “She’s been missing since her mother was killed. She was just eleven years old at the time, and mentally disabled, not able to take care of herself. The assumption is that she is dead.”

  “I think we need to look into this a little more,” Durham said. “Print me out what you have on the ex-wife’s death. I want to contact the police department that investigated the case. I’ll have them pull the cold-case file. Also, I want to know where this out-of-the-way place in British Columbia is where Sargent claims to have been fishing at the time. Is Sargent’s lawyer here yet?”

  “No,” Jones replied. “He was apparently in court, but will come as soon as the session is done, which should be”—he looked at his watch—“already. It’s five-thirty and court usually quits at five. It’s Jack Jackson.”

  “Well, that’s not good news. If I ever knew an attorney who should be disbarred, it’s Jackson. Evan, I want to be in on your next interrogation of Sargent. I think this whole thing is about more than the murder of a drug addict he may have abused in prison. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. If Sargent killed his wife—and maybe even his daughter—I want him for it.”

  * * *

  When Jackson arrived to meet with his client, he was dismayed to see the District Attorney present. Jackson and Durham did not get along at all, and Jackson won fewer cases when Durham was prosecuting than he did when one of the Assistant DAs had the job. Durham had the reputation for being a hard prosecutor, a man who was not likely to let a criminal get away with anything. Had Durham been the DA when some of the other accusations against Sargent came to light, Jackson would not have been able to get him off so easily—and the cases would not have all come up in front of the same judge.

  “Remember,” Jackson told his client, “you don’t have to say anything.”

  Sargent nodded. He wouldn’t open his mouth unless Jackson told him to.

  Marvin Durham, a handsome and charismatic African American in his mid-fifties, had only been Multnomah County District Attorney for a short time, but he had been an Assistant DA for some years before that and a criminal defense attorney for many years prior. So he knew the court system from both sides. He was definitely a man to be reckoned with. No defense attorney worth his salt presented a shoddy case when they were up against Durham. He sat across the table from the former warden and his attorney and looked Sargent right in the eye.

  Mr. Sargent, this is a pretty serious charge here,” he said, waving the arrest warrant. “What do you have to say about it?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Sargent said, forgetting he was supposed to wait for his attorney’s permission to speak.

  “Well, we always expect people to say that when they’re arrested. No one likes to admit they’ve committed a crime. And it is up to us to prove that we’re right and you really did do it. We’re pretty confident that will happen. I’ve just been looking over your record…”

  “I don’t have a record,” Sargent stated.

  “Well, it’s true that you were never convicted of anything. But I have a question regarding a case that took place twenty-two years ago. The murder of your ex-wife.”

  Jackson interrupted with, “That is beyond the scope of this particular murder charge. My client was never charged with the murder of his ex-wife.”

  “Or the disappearance of his daughter,” Durham added. “I realize that. It is a cold case, but still an open one. What I want to know is where in Canada you were when your ex-wife was murdered, and can you prove it?”

  “The police were given all of that information at the time,” Jackson said. “My client was able to prove he was in Canada at the time of his ex-wife’s death. He had receipts from gas stations, canoe rental, everything he needed.”

  “Canoe rental?” Durham asked.

  “He stayed on a small island in Okanagan Lake, Rattlesnake Island. It is only accessible by boat from a town on the western shore of the lake, Peachland.”

  “Is there a hotel on the island?”

  Here Sargent laughed. “That would have been nice. But there’s only the ruins of a miniature golf course built in the 70s by some Arab who bought the island and attempted to turn it into a tourist attraction. He didn’t succeed, though. Later he raided the Canadian Embassy in Beirut and held thirty-four people hostage until the Canadian Government agreed to pay him a lot of money to buy the island back from him. The island is pretty much solid rock, with a little bit of sand at a landing place. I had a small tent and my fishing gear. That’s about all there was room for. The people at the boat dock in Peachland verified my canoe rental. I was there, Detective. Anyway, I thought this was supposed to be about the murder of that pink-haired druggie.”

  “Don,” Harve said. “You told us you hadn’t seen Abby Taylor in years, didn’t even know she was in the Greenwood Clinic. So how’d you know about her pink hair?”

  Sargent paused for a moment. “I guess I read it in the newspaper,” he said.

  “I didn’t think a murder in our little neck of the woods had made the Portland papers,” Harve said. “And our local newspaper doesn’t come out until tomorrow.”

  “Well, sheriff, I am, if you will recall, dating a woman from your ‘neck of the woods.’ Maybe she told me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sargent, but you know that Celine flew to Boston Friday because her daughter who lives there is having a baby. I think you told me that yourself yesterday afternoon following Ruby Stone’s funeral.”

  “You need to stop talking,” Jack Jackson told his client.

  “Okay,” Sargent said.

  “Am I to understand,” Jackson asked, “that my client is charged with the murder of this Taylor woman?”

  “Yes,” said the DA.

  “And you have sufficient evidence?”

  “Enough to have him arraigned,” Durham said. “It’s a little late now, but I’ll get an arraignment scheduled first thing in the morn-ing and will let you know.”

  “I’ll have him out of here in no time,” Jackson said with a smirk.

  * * *

  Durham did more the next morning than schedule the arraignment (which was set for Friday afternoon). He also contacted the Crescent City Police Department and asked them to send him everything they had on the twenty-two-year-old cold-case murder of Sargent’s ex-wife, Mary, and the disappearance of his young, mentally-disabled daughter, Donelle. And he called the RCMP in Peachland, British Columbia, to see what records they could find dating back twenty-two years, of canoe rentals.

  “You really expect to find anything back that far?” Jones asked him.

  “Probably not,” Durham said, “but it doesn’t hurt to try.”

  Durham had also looked through Sargent’s file at the ‘inappropriate sexual contact’ charges that had been filed against the former warden over the years, which turned out to be a lot more than the three cases Louise had found. He handed the list to Jones. “Have someone in t
he Sex Trafficking Unit see if they can find these women,” he said. “And see if their stories have changed over the years.”

  “Sex Trafficking?”

  “A lot of women who are abused in prison end up in a life of prostitution. And I don’t think they end up there by accident. Sex trafficking is, unfortunately, really big in Portland. I’ve been making a bit of a study on it lately. And I’ve kind of wondered if some of the men who abuse female prisoners might also be the same men who are luring—or perhaps even forcing—these women into the sex business.”

  “Men like Don Sargent?”

  “Precisely. He may have been selling these women into prostitution when they were released. And making money from them. Now, if he raped the Taylor girl, she may have been the last one, as shortly after that he was transferred to Columbia River, where there were no women to molest.”

  “Do you suppose that was why he made the transfer—because maybe he was politely asked to?” Jones asked. “Maybe the Coffee Creek folks thought he was guilty but couldn’t prove it, so they just took steps to get him out of there?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Durham said. “I’m just really bothered by the fact that all of the abuse charges were heard before Judge Green. That’s highly unusual. That’s why I’d like to find those women. And I think I’ll take a run down to Coffee Creek this afternoon. Wanna come?”

  “Sure,” Jones said.

  The miracle of modern technology really makes things easier for law enforcement. Less than an hour after he had talked to the Crescent City Chief of Police, Durham received an e-mail with an attachment consisting of the entire file on the Mary Sargent murder case. Twenty minutes after that he got a phone call from a marina concessionaire in Peachland. The place had been in business for over thirty years, and had recently started digitizing its transactions. Although receipts from twenty-two years ago weren’t on their computer, everything had been sorted in boxes by date.

  “Give me the date and give me a half hour and I’ll have it for you,” the man said.

  “You keep records back that far?” Durham asked.

  “From the day we opened,” the man said. “I majored in business management with a minor in computer science in college and was even business-oriented in high school, so I made sure my old man, who owned the business back then, kept accurate records. You never know when you might need some tidbit of infor-mation.”

  “Produce that receipt for me and I think you may prove that today.” Durham gave him the date, then sat back and started to read the report from Crescent City. Mary Sargent had died on a Saturday night in late July. Her eleven-year-old daughter Donelle had disappeared at that same time. Don Sargent claimed he had been driving to British Columbia and spent the night in Ellensburg, Washington, the night of his ex-wife’s murder. Ellensburg was only about a five-hour or so drive from Salem, but he claimed he had started out late, so didn’t want to do the whole trip that same day. Ellensburg, he said, was about the half-way mark, which was true. He had no motel receipt because he’d just slept in the back of his pickup, which had a camper shell.

  According the Sargent’s sworn affidavit, he’d done the rest of the trip the next day. Ellensburg to Peachland is normally about 5 1/2 hours. But, Sargent said, he’d stopped off for a while in Penticton, a town he really liked. He’d gone for a swim in Skaha Lake, at the south end of town, then had eaten lunch. He’d eaten at a fast food restaurant, paid cash, and had not kept the receipt. He had first driven up the east side of Okanagan Lake, thinking the island was closer to that side. But he learned that the only place to rent a boat (he wanted a canoe) on the east side was Naramata, and it was much too far to the island from there—at least for him. He needed, he was told, to go to Peachland, where the distance to the island was just a little over four miles. So he had backtracked to Penticton, then up the west side of the lake to Peachland, where he again slept in the back of his pickup overnight, then rented his canoe Monday morning and paddled over to Rattlesnake Island, where he spent five days fishing.

  There was a faint photocopy of a receipt for the boat rental (hopefully, Durham would have his own copy soon), but no receipts for gas for his car, except for one in Omak, Washington, on his way home. No proof that he stayed overnight in Ellensburg, no proof that he spent the better part of Sunday in Penticton.

  Durham leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. Assistant DA Anna Sanchez was at her desk, working on a sex-trafficking case. “Hey, Anna,” he called. “You ever been to Crescent City?”

  “Yeah, once,” Ana replied.

  “How long does it take to drive there?” Durham asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Five or six hours, I think. Depends on what time of day you go and if you stop anywhere along the way.”

  “Thanks. So from Salem it would be about an hour less.”

  “Yeah. About. You thinking of going there?”

  “Not right now. Just thinking things through for a case. Need to construct a timeline.”

  “The former warden you arrested for killing the girl from the rehab place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he got to do with Crescent City?”

  “His ex-wife was murdered there a couple decades ago. It’s a cold case. Our guy might have done it.”

  “Wasn’t he looked into at the time?”

  “Yeah, but Crescent City is a small town. We have better resources. We also have me. And I don’t give up easily.”

  Durham’s phone rang. It was the marina guy from Peachland. “I found the record you wanted,” he said. “Isn’t this the same one the police were inquiring about way back then?”

  “You remember that?” Durham queried.

  “Sure,” the man said. “That was the only time the cops came around here about anything. I was just a kid then, still in high school, and I thought it was terribly exciting, eh? Can’t forget something like that. Didn’t that case ever get solved?”

  “No, but I think it’s about to be. Tell me—what was your name again?”

  “Tim. Tim North.”

  “Okay, Tim, tell me what you remember about that situation.”

  “Well, the guy came in one morning, says he wants to rent a canoe for a week. Wanted to go camping on Ogopogo Island. Wanted to do some fishing, eh?”

  “Wait a minute.” Durham interrupted. “I thought it was Rattlesnake Island.”

  “It is—at least, that’s the official name. But folks around here still call it Ogopogo Island. Ogopogo is Okanagan Lake’s resident sea monster—sort of like Nessie in Scotland, you know. An old Indian legend. The monster is supposed to hang out around the island, in some underwater cave. Haven’t been a lot of sightings in recent years, though.”

  “Okay, go on about this guy.”

  “Well, there’s nothing more, really. He rented the canoe Monday morning, brought it back, let’s see, Saturday afternoon.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Well, he came in to the shop alone. But I seem to recall there was someone else in the truck.”

  “Another man?”

  “No, a young girl, looked like maybe she had Down Syndrome —you know, kind of slanty-eyed, flat face.”

  “You sure about that? This many years later, you’re sure about that? This is important, Tim.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve a sister with Down Syndrome. So I notice other people like that.”

  “Did you tell that to the police at the time?”

  “I don’t think they asked me.”

  “Was the girl still with him when he brought the canoe back?”

  “Dunno. Wasn’t there then. I was off Saturdays and went kayaking with some buddies.”

  “Thanks, Tim. Will you email me a copy of that canoe rental agreement?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Durham gave a triumphant shout as he hung up the phone.

  “What are you so happy about?” Evan Jones asked, as he entered the DA’s office.

  “We’ve got him,” D
urham said. “We’ve definitely got him!” He told Jones what he had learned from Tim North in Peachland, even the part about the legendary ‘sea monster.’ “That was a new one on me,” he said.

  “He remembered something from that long ago?” Jones asked.

  “Hey, he was a kid. It was exciting to be able to help out in a police investigation. He’ll remember that forever. He’ll be a really credible witness on the stand. Now, you ready to run down to Wilsonville?”

  “You bet.”

  “Okay. I just have one call to make and I’ll be ready.”

  * * *

  “So,” Durham began as they started on the short drive to the women’s correctional facility about twenty miles south of Portland, “any luck on locating any of those women?”

  “I did put the sex trafficking team on it,” Jones said. “So far they’ve found one—in Texas. They’ve got a Skype interview with her scheduled for tomorrow.”

  “Great! Let’s hope they find some more. I have a really bad feeling about this Sargent guy. We need to get to the bottom of this. That call I made just before we left was to the RCMP up in the Okanagan. I asked them to check out Rattlesnake Island to see if there was anywhere a body could have been buried.”

  “You think Sargent killed his kid and buried her there on the island?”

  “I think it’s possible. The officer I talked to said the island is pretty much just rock. But he’s going to send some men over there to check it out. It’s a small island. If there’s anywhere there someone could bury a body, they’ll find it.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SINCE IT HAD BEEN RATHER LATE BY THE TME SHERIFF Blodgett got back to Misty Valley, he waited until Wednesday morning to tell Copper what had happened in Portland. She actually had called him on his cell before he even left home that morning, asking for an update.

  “Sorry, Copper,” he said. “It was late when I got back last night. I’m on my way in right now. I need some breakfast first, though.”