The Voxlightner Scandal

by Don Travis

  THE NEXT day Charlie rapped on my office door and meandered over to the table in the corner of my office. I joined him there. His blazer held the sweet smell of pipe tobacco.

  “Find anything on Rocky?” I asked.

  “Sergeant Lodeen’s a complex man,” he said. “Infantry platoon noncom by the time he reached Afghanistan in 2009 as a part of the surge. Records show he was a good soldier. Demonstrated bravery and decent leadership skills. Even so, he got a general discharge early this year.”

  My interest surged. “For what?”

  “Too quick on the trigger. His unit got ambushed once while on patrol. Lost some buddies. Seems he was largely responsible for repelling the attack. Saved some lives. But after that he’d shoot first and take a look afterward to see who he shot. Sometimes it was friendlies.”

  The hair of my neck rose. “Now his remark about killing across the pond makes sense. He killed and got away with it. Anything else?”

  “He came here after his release from the Army.”

  “Why here? Why not back to California?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Don’t have an answer… yet. He works as a body man in an auto repair shop. Minor jacket. Recreational drugs, once. Drunk and disorderly, twice. One DWI.”

  “Finances?”

  “There aren’t any to speak of. Lives on his paycheck. Rents a one-bedroom apartment. Spends his money on booze.”

  “Women?”

  “They spend their money on him. Never been married. Dates occasionally but doesn’t seem to have anyone in his life right now.”

  “That matches what I’ve learned.”

  “Do we put a watch on him?”

  “Not sure what a tail would find out. We already know he’s close to Spence, so nothing to gain there.”

  “Spencer have a jacket?” Charlie asked.

  “His background’s about like Lodeen’s. Enlisted in the Army and served his full enlistment. Served in Afghanistan without a problem. Came back to Albuquerque after he mustered out and kept his nose clean except for a couple of dustups in bars. Never been married. Girlfriends in and out of his life. Belhaven—as a lover—was simply a matter of economics to Spence. May have been getting it on with Lodeen as well.”

  “Based on…?”

  “My gut feeling,” I said. “Plus some signals he was sending.”

  “So what do we do next?”

  “Use Guerra to shake them up,” I said. “But first I want to know what the investigator we hired to check on Cag Jr. at the Virginia Military Institute has to say.”

  Charlie got him on the speaker phone, and the man confirmed Cadet Cagney Harper Jr. was present on VMI’s campus during the entire week of July 17 through 23. On Wednesday of the week of Belhaven’s death, Cag was standing guard duty as a form of punishment. The kid was having a rough time coping with the academy’s strict discipline.

  ROY GUERRA was happy to help out. He wasn’t doing any better than we were at closing the case, and while he no longer stayed close to learn my technique, he was still cooperative. On Monday morning he called Harris, the Harpers, Sarah, and Spencer down to APD for questioning. I prevailed upon him to send for Rocky Lodeen and have him report in a little later than the others.

  Roy enlisted the aid of another new detective, Glenann Hastings, with whom I worked the Abaddon’s Locusts case last year. She was smart and pretty and fit into about any stratum of society you could name. Roy would do well to snag Glenann as his partner. Detective Sergeant Don Carson also assisted.

  Paul considered this an event worthy of pulling him off another assignment—for which he was fighting a deadline. He joined me in a room that didn’t exist when I was a detective with the force, a space full of electronic equipment allowing viewers to monitor recorded interviews going on in multiple locations. Roy put Melanie Harper in one room while Glenann questioned Cag Sr. in another. Don Carson, the most experienced of the detectives, tackled Harris Belhaven in yet another. From what I could see, Harris’s anger was back, riding his shoulders like a cowboy hugging a bronc. Sarah and Spence sat in the waiting room as far apart as possible. Lodeen hadn’t yet arrived.

  Gene joined us in the communications room—if that was what it was called—to monitor the interviews. Things went about as expected. Melanie seemed confused, Cag bemused, and Harris enraged. Nonetheless, details of the interviewees’ financial stress slowly emerged. Melanie and Cag were literally saved from bankruptcy by Pierce’s death. It rescued Harris from a terrible year for investments. He apparently needed the partial settlement from Pierce’s estate as much as his sister and her husband.

  I chanced to glance at the waiting room monitor to see how Sarah and Spence were doing in their respective corners in time to see Rocky Lodeen escorted into the room. He stood in the doorway for a second, glancing around. When his eyes settled on Sarah, he walked over to her. She looked up and greeted him with a smile. There was no audio, but the brief conversation seemed amiable. Then she nodded in Spence’s direction, and Rocky ambled across the room to his buddy, giving him a fist bump, which passed for a handshake among a certain group. When he settled in a seat beside Spence, I turned my attention back to Don Carson’s interview with Harris, who wore a thunderous look. Paul moved to my side and watched the monitor with me.

  “HOW MANY times do I have to tell you? I did not kill Pierce Belhaven. Hell, he was my father, for crying out loud. And don’t throw me the ‘fractured relationship’ card, either. We were dispassionate but not fractured.”

  Don gave him a long look. “View this from my side of the table, Mr. Belhaven. You had a poor, probably resentful relationship with your father, your ex-wives were draining your trust income, you had a disastrous year at your job, and you have no alibi.”

  “How did I get in the house?” he demanded.

  “With the key you never returned.”

  Harris’s face turned red. “And the security code on the home alarm?”

  “It’s never been changed.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Your father’s death rescued you from bankruptcy. And when the life policy pays—if it does—”

  “Bankruptcy? That’s a stretch. And what do you mean, if it does?”

  “The insurance company’s not going to pay a policy to your father’s killer. They’re going to withhold payment until the murderer is identified. Regardless of what your lawyer says,” Don added.

  “Is that true?” Paul whispered in my ear.

  “They’ll delay as long as possible, but the lawyers Harris and Melanie hired will eventually force them to pay.”

  I watched the monitor as Harris reached the conclusion he should have some time ago.

  “Speaking of lawyers,” he said, spitting the words out, “I think it’s time I called him in here.”

  “Your choice. But if you’re sincere in your denial of having anything to do with your father’s death, the lawyer will put a muzzle on you and prevent you from helping to find his killer.”

  Don terminated the interview when Harris insisted.

  MELANIE WAS more mortified than offended at being questioned about her father’s death. She seemed totally at sea about details. By referring to her pocket calendar, she came up with the fact she’d worked a two-to-nine shift that Wednesday afternoon. She was home with her husband after that.

  She only became animated when Roy touched on her son. Then she went defensive, even though we knew Cag Jr. had been on campus in Lexington the entire week. Perhaps understandably he remained a sensitive subject for her. She haltingly confirmed her son’s troubles, including his arrests. I felt sorry for her. It was as if every question about Cag Jr. was a lash of a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  CONVERSELY, CAG Harper Sr. appeared to relish talking about his son’s legal difficulties as a matter of pride at how the boy faced up to his problems and did something about them. He was more reticent about discussing the financial difficulties Cag Jr. brought on his family. Glenann worked a bit harder at Cag Sr.’s r
ub with his father-in-law and where he’d been that night. He stuck to his guns. He’d worked at his second job that night but had been home when his wife came in after her shift. They ate a late dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and then spent the rest of the evening watching television.

  SARAH REMAINED distant when questioned by Glenann, but doggedly insisted she loved Pierce Belhaven and could never do anything to harm him. She appeared to shiver as she answered the question. Sincere or contrived? Hard to know. I found it difficult to believe this thirty-year-old brunette loved the sixty-year-old writer in a romantic way but could understand a fondness permitting intimacy. Plus he was her sole means of support.

  Sarah maintained at least an outward calm even when Glenann bit down hard and pushed her on how much she benefited from her lover’s death. Not once did Sarah even mention the word lawyer.

  Her overnight stay in Las Cruces the night of Belhaven’s death was convincing, and the maids at the motel had confirmed they remembered her because she’d taken the time to chat with them while asking for recommendations on places to eat. To the best of their recollection, the bed had been slept in and the room exhibited signs of habitation. But as Paul once said, it was only a three-hour drive from there to Albuquerque.

  SPENCE’S STUDIED charm didn’t work on Don Carson. I watched the kid send subtle messages. Doubtless the room was full of pheromones by the time the interview ended, but the little doo-dads didn’t speak to one another. I don’t believe Don caught on that Spence was engaged in some nonverbal flirting.

  Don spent most of his time detailing Spence’s movements on the day of Belhaven’s death. The young man fingered the birthmark on his cheek and recited a tale of drinking at the Hog, as Spence called the tavern. Don reviewed Spence’s finances, which looked to be stressed but not strained. The purchase of his 2010 Barracuda would have been beyond his capability had not Belhaven cosigned the bank’s loan. That said, Spence met each payment on time. Nothing appeared amiss in his bank account, but he seemed to have money to occasionally take women on dates to restaurants. His principal outlay seemed to be for drinking at the Hogshead and elsewhere. Doubtless Belhaven donated money over and above Spence’s earned wages for over and above services performed. Of course, all of this changed when Spence received his bequest from Belhaven’s estate. At no time during the interview did he ask for an attorney.

  THIS WAS Roy’s second go-round with Rocky Lodeen, and he went at the young man a bit aggressively, which might have been the right approach.

  “You claim you and Spencer Spears were at the Hogshead the night of July 20 until midnight or later?”

  “No, I said until closing. At least that’s what I marked down in my social calendar.”

  “Listen, smartass, this may be a game to you, but it’s murder to the state. You get a civil tongue in your head.”

  “Yes, sir.” It came off as just short of snarky.

  Roy led Lodeen through the same story the young man gave me earlier. He was at the Hogshead when Spence arrived eight or after, and they remained until closing. Lodeen also gave the detective the names of the other two who made up the party.

  “The other two—” Roy paused to check his notes. “—Neal Chutney and Charles Mumfrey claim they weren’t there the entire evening. They came and went, leaving the two of you alone.”

  “So?”

  “So what if you and Spencer Spears rode over to Post Oak Drive and confronted Belhaven.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Who knows? To extort some money from him to finance the evening, maybe. And as soon as Belhaven saw the two of you together, he knew you were more than just friends and got jealous. Put up a fuss. Threatened to cut Spencer off. This would have seriously impacted your income. A fuss turned into a fight, which turned into murder. Maybe you were defending yourselves and Belhaven was accidentally killed. That might earn you some consideration with the judge.”

  Lodeen laughed aloud. “Tube didn’t say nothing about a fight.”

  “We don’t tell television reporters everything. What about it? You help us out?”

  “Dream on, guy. I didn’t lay a hand on the old man.”

  “But you admit going there that night.”

  “Don’t admit nothing. I was at the Hog all evening. Ask the people at the tavern. They’ll tell you.”

  “I did. They tell me there was a lot of coming and going at the table. I think Spencer was tired of servicing the old boy and talked you into helping him put an end to it. You killed Belhaven while Spencer trashed the office.”

  “You’re nuts. But tell me why he’d do that. To the office, I mean?”

  “To make everyone think exactly what they did. Belhaven’s murder was to stop his investigation of an old crime.”

  Rocky sighed and tapped his fingers on the metal table. “I didn’t do nothing, and you can’t prove I did.”

  “Not yet,” Roy said with an appropriate amount of menace in his voice. “But I’m working on it.”

  Chapter 24

  SOMETHING ABOUT Rocky Lodeen piqued my interest, so the next day I asked Hazel to start a deeper background check on the man. In return she put me to work on a case a Boston confidential investigator contracted our help for. A young woman, an heiress in fact, was believed to have run off with a boyfriend to the fabled city of Taos.

  I say fabled because it was both a town in northern New Mexico rich in art history and a nearby iconic Native American pueblo awash in indigenous culture. It didn’t take long to find the pair registered at the Sagebrush Inn as Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Smith. Smith turned out to be the boyfriend’s legal name, and they’d been married in Las Vegas, Nevada two days prior. As the woman was of legal age, there was nothing to do but report the situation to the Boston PI and wonder why he needed us to do a simple survey of motels and hotels. Even so, Hazel was pleased we’d earned some billable hours, and if she was happy, I was happy. Sometimes it was hard to figure out who was boss at Vinson and Weeks, Confidential Investigations.

  On Wednesday Hazel put the results of her investigation of Lodeen on my desk, and it proved interesting and disturbing at the same time. Rockwell B. Lodeen was born in a small Southern California town and raised in the Los Angeles area. A high school graduate, he’d entered the school of hard knocks for his advanced education. He spent a few years in the movie industry as a gofer, meaning he was an errand boy running and fetching for just about anyone on the set. He graduated to production assistant, which likely meant he did the exact same thing but for fewer people. But then I’m not in the movie business and have an imprecise grasp of such things.

  Then he became a stuntman, one thing I did understand. He took falls and other life-or-limb-threatening jobs in order to preserve the health and looks of more valuable talent. To my mind, that included car crashes. Paul’s “accident” at San Mateo and Copper early last September sprang to mind. A T-bone would be one of the basic moves in a stunt driver’s repertoire. Lodeen left the movie business rather abruptly and entered the Army. A little more digging revealed why. He’d almost killed a man in a drunken brawl and got a break on the charges by enlisting. It didn’t take long for him to mess up that gig by killing Afghans indiscriminately. If that didn’t prove escalation of his violent tendencies, I don’t know what would.

  With this information in hand, I became more interested in Rocky’s finances beyond what Charlie had turned up. Hazel located a checking account in a local bank where he deposited his paychecks—which were on the low end of the professional scale for a vehicle body repairman—and a savings account now drained to almost zero. She found no car loan for a 2009 black Cougar, the vehicle he drove away from the interview at the police department two days ago. Activity in the checking account was limited to a few cash withdrawals and a monthly check for his rent on a place on Pitt NE not far from CNM’s Montoya campus and quite near Spencer Spears’s apartment.

  I poked into the MVD database and located a registration for Rocky’s Cougar. Once I l
ocated the name of the dealer, I phoned and ran into a brick wall. The dealership wouldn’t part with the information, not to a “PI,” as they saw fit to label me. I hung up and ran Roy Guerra to ground. If they wouldn’t talk to a licensed confidential investigator, maybe they’d respond to an APD detective. Roy agreed to give it a try and phoned me back within thirty minutes.

  “Paid cash for the car on October 4.”

  “Cash?”

  “Combination of cash and a cashier’s check.”

  “Give me the details of the cashier’s check.”

  Roy told me the check was purchased from Rocky Lodeen’s bank. How? Presumably using cash, but Hazel could check on this for me later. The balance of the car’s purchase price was paid in cash, likely money from the depleted savings account. Why not include it all in one check? The most likely explanation was Rocky’s inexperience with such transactions. The dealer also said Rocky test drove the car twice a couple of weeks before the purchase.

  “Do you understand the significance of this?” I asked Roy.

  “He got his hands on a lot of money.”

  “On the day following the payout of Belhaven’s bequest to Sarah Thackerson and Spencer Spears.”

  “Coulda been one buddy loaning another buddy some Washingtons after hitting the jackpot.”

  “Could have been. But it could also mean Rocky Lodeen was hired to do the hit on Belhaven.”