These days, except for Baxter Packing, most people work outside the city. Truckers going over the road, a Walmart box store one county to the east, an Amazon warehouse two counties to the south. The luckiest endure an eighty-mile round-trip commute to a unionized GE plant or find government jobs at Ackley Air Force Base even farther away.
Unsynchronized traffic lights slow me down as I make my way along Baxter Boulevard. I’m forced to observe the remnants of Baxter’s glory days. The pitted sandstone blocks of the courthouse and the jail, City Hall Park with its untended shrubs and lawn. Baxter’s population numbered 103,412 at the last census. If it should fall below a hundred thousand at the next census, a near certainty, Baxter will cease to be a city and become a town.
Mayor Venn and the city council are obsessed with keeping our city a city, despite the cratering economy. They want to attract new business, using our low homicide rate to bolster a claim that we’re family friendly. That’s bullshit. The opiate crisis didn’t just roll through town, here and gone, it set up permanent residence. Burglaries are as common in Baxter as they are in third-world cities.
Irrational or not, the mayor will lean on Chief Black, who will lean on me. But that’s Baxter’s story. Nepotism, cronyism, pay-to-play. The politicians are tearing the last bits of flesh from the city’s bones. I’m not going to wait until those bones are bare, and I work my cases hard while I apply to police departments in viable cities like Minneapolis or Chicago. These are cities that all patriotic Baxterites pretend to despise, even as their college-bound children seek them out.
The streets are still wet from last night’s rain, and little ponds surround plugged drains at the curb. Most of our businesses are closed this early on a Sunday morning, but the churches I pass are doing good business. We’re big on Christianity in Baxter. Big on every brand from St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church to the Tabernacle Church of God, where the pastor handles rattlesnakes. Religion doesn’t appeal to me, but most of these churches have a second mission that does. By midafternoon they’ll be transformed into food pantries, feeding hundreds of destitute families. That’s how far down we’ve come.
The atrocity at the Skyview doesn’t surprise me. But atrocity it is. First, it rained last night. Second, the Skyview’s parking lot is in need of maintenance, and there are muddy potholes. Third, mud records and preserves the tire treads of any vehicle passing through it. Fourth, this end of the parking lot contains six cruisers, an ambulance, a fire engine, the coroner’s van, and an Audi that I’m guessing belongs to the victim. All have passed through the same potholes that might have captured the perpetrator’s treads. All have deposited their own tire impressions in the mud.
Did I mention that our cops are paid, on average, twenty-five percent less than cops assigned to similar duty in other parts of the state? Factor in rampant nepotism, and you have the makings of a truly incompetent force.
The Dink’s standing in front of the last in a line of cabins maybe twenty feet apart. That would be Detective John Meacham, brother of Gloria Meacham, city council president. You can give the Dink a direct order and assume that he’ll make at least a half-hearted attempt to follow it. But that’s all you’re likely to get. And don’t expect him to report back when he finishes the job. Look for him in the nearest coffee shop.
“Who was first on the scene?” I ask.
“Harvey and Morello.”
“And when did you get here?”
“A few minutes later. I was right around the corner.”
“And you didn’t think to seal off the parking lot? Never crossed your mind?”
One thing about the Dink, he knows he’s protected. “Nope,” he tells me. “It never did.”
“Seal it off now, Detective. Except for the Audi, I want every vehicle moved.”
The Skyview Motor Court’s seen better days, much better. The twelve little buildings are supposed to resemble log cabins, but the logs were never logs, only siding that weathered badly over the years. Now the phony bark is peeling, reminding me of a long-haired dog shedding its winter coat.
I step onto the small porch that fronts Cabin 909’s open doorway just as our coroner emerges. Most communities of any size employ full-time medical examiners. Baxter has a coroner-cardiologist, Arshan Rishnavata, who gets paid by the body.
Arshan likes talking tough. “Somebody jammed a pillow against the back of his head and put a bullet through it. His forehead and most of his brain are all over the sheets.”
I lay a hand on his chest. “Forget the brains, Arshan. It’s the mayor who’s all over this. Do the autopsy right. Give me a full tox screen, scrape his fingernails, check him for cancer, heart disease, and STDs. No shortcuts.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DELIA
Two of my detectives, Vernon Taney and Laura Udell, stand by the body of a man. The man’s naked and stretched out on the room’s only bed. He’s lying on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow that’s soaked in blood. Brain matter and stuffing from a blackened pillow blot the entry wound. The head injury is the only visible wound on the body.
Vern Taney’s not only my partner of choice on investigations, but along with his wife and son, he pretty much defines my social life. Vern’s a local, with family ties reaching back a hundred years. Unlike the Dink and most of the other locals on the force, he’s as dedicated to Baxter and the craft of policing as he is to his family. Laura Udell, by contrast, is the chief’s sister-in-law. Or maybe cousin or niece. It’s reached the point where it’s hard to keep track.
“The staties on the way, Vern?”
“Less than an hour out, Lieutenant,” Vern tells me.
Baxter doesn’t have a crime scene unit. Instead, we have a few cops who can fingerprint a burglarized house or a stolen car. But systematically identifying and collecting well-documented blood and DNA evidence? Sorry, can’t afford the training. We use the state’s crime scene unit. Their lab, too.
“Detective,” I tell Laura, “I want you to supervise a search of the parking lot and the area around the cabin. Photograph anything you find before you collect it.”
“Got it, Lou.”
Laura out of the way, I turn back to Vern. A football hero back in his high school days, Vern is amiable and folksy with his colleagues. Just another local, a guy you can talk sports with at the corner bar. But don’t disrespect him or the department, or resist arrest. Vern’s hands are almost as big as my head.
“You find his cell phone?” I ask.
“Nope, but the coroner’s done, so we can turn him over. We know the asshole, by the way.”
“That right?”
“Name’s Bradley Grieg, according to his driver’s license.”
It takes a moment, but then it comes back to me. A woman beat to shit, cheeks the color of an eggplant, eyes swollen shut, jaw fractured. I move closer to the bed as I examine Grieg’s hands. I’m looking for bruises, but they’re both clean.
“What was her name again, Vern? The victim?”
“Cindy Sherman.”
“Right.”
Cindy was only nineteen. Way too young to be married to an asshole like Bradley Grieg. But she’d named him as her attacker, and we had him in a cage when she decided not to testify. Instead, she hired an attorney who told us that the matter had been “addressed” and Bradley would no longer be part of Cindy’s life. By then we knew that Bradley was buddy-buddy with Connor Schmidt, son of Carl Schmidt.
Carl Schmidt’s the head of what passes for a mob crew in Baxter. Unlike the city, he’s prospered, what with the permanently unemployed consoling themselves with dope, coke, meth, and alcohol. But that’s been the pattern from the beginning. As the packing plants closed one by one, the number of addicts grew, as did the robbery and burglary rates, as did incidents of domestic violence and the number of families headed by women.
“Word out there,” Vern explains, “is that Connor stepped in. Told Cindy if she didn’t testify, he would guarantee that she’d never hear from Bradley ag
ain. Cindy took the deal.”
Vern rolls Grieg over in my direction. Grieg’s mouth is open far enough to reveal a gold tooth far back in a shattered jaw. Most of the rest of his face is gone.
“You speak to the motel manager, Vern?”
“Owner-manager. That would be Felice Gaitskill, who I knew back in high school. She was a few years ahead of me. Felice told me Grieg checked in yesterday afternoon. No idea where he went from there, if he went out at all.”
“What about video?”
“Three cameras mounted over the door to the office, facing left, right, and forward.”
“That’s it?” Two stories high, the office is closer to a house than a cabin. It’s also a hundred yards away.
“Fraid so, Delia. And I understand why Grieg chose a cabin on the edge of the motel. His home is only a mile from here, and the boy wasn’t married, so he musta been up to some kinda bullshit. But check out this here.” Vern lifts Grieg’s left arm to reveal the healed tracks of a reformed junkie, along with enough fresh punctures to transform his arm into a pincushion.
“Now check out the bathroom,” Vern tells me. “The man’s works are spread out on the edge of the tub.”
“Yeah, I will. But what about the video? We gonna see it today?”
“The Gaitskills were reluctant. That would be Felice and her son, Richard. So I explained how we’d have to seal off the motel until we got a warrant. Said it nice and all, like I didn’t have any choice in the matter. That’s when they decided to cooperate.”
I dispatch Vern to make sure the video’s not accidentally deleted. Motel owners believe that, to many of their customers, privacy is more important than clean sheets. I also want a few minutes to let my thoughts run where they will. Vern was right about one thing. With Grieg’s home only a short distance away, he hadn’t come to the Skyview for a night’s sleep.
A drug deal gone bad? That’s my first thought. Connor Schmidt and his father are known dealers, and I’ve been after them for a long time. So far, they’ve been too quick. By the time we learn of a deal, it’s already gone down. I’ll probably nail them sometime in the future, but I’m not holding my breath. When the stars line up, they line up.
I check the bathroom first. On the edge of the tub I find a syringe, a teaspoon, a ball of cotton, and a tiny plastic vial holding a bit of brown powder. A pair of towels on the floor and the bottom of the shower stall are still damp.
Back in the main room, I take another slow inventory, listing each item as I proceed. A three-drawer bureau, a desk and hard-backed chair, an upholstered chair in the corner, a queen-size bed, its sheets and blankets, though bloodstained, almost undisturbed. The room’s flat-screen TV is mounted above the desk. A print above the bed depicts a woodsman bent over a mountain stream.
The pants Grieg had been wearing lie in a heap on the upholstered chair. A T-shirt, silk from the look of it, and a thin black jacket have been tossed onto the carpet.
In a hurry when he came through the door? That’s what it looks like. But there’s another item in the room, this one definitely out of place. An expensive snakeskin bag lies open and empty on the bureau.
The earliest stage of an investigation, at least for this cop, is packed with questions. Was the snakeskin bag full before Grieg carried it from the car into the room? Why is it open? Were its contents stolen? Or were its contents exchanged before Grieg checked in? After? If so, exchanged for what? Cash? The only cash in the room is still in Grieg’s pocket. The only drugs, a vial of what’s probably heroin or fentanyl, rests on the edge of the tub.
The empty bag indicates robbery. But that doesn’t jibe with Grieg’s lying naked on the bed after a shower. Drug dealers rarely conduct business in the nude. And I’m almost certain that Grieg hasn’t been moved. Lividity is pronounced, with Grieg’s blood pooled on his chest and the front of his legs. No, he died where he is right now. Lying naked on that bed.
Always begin with the most likely explanation. Only move on when you’ve proved that explanation false. The strewn clothes? The damp towels? Naked on the bed? Bradley Grieg brought the wrong woman to Cabin 909.
CHAPTER SIX
CONNOR
“Do me a favor and try to organize your fuckin’ thoughts. For once in your life, tell me what happened, exactly. This, then this, then that. Okay? One, then two, then three.”
That’s Carl Schmidt talking. My dad. Dad’s pissed off, but then he’s always pissed off. At me, at Mom, at the asshole thugs who work for us, at the dry cleaner for leavin’ a stain on his jacket. My best guess? Dad’s anger began as an act designed to keep his workers (and his customers) in line. But then it grew into a habit he couldn’t break. I say this because Mom claims that once upon a time her husband was even tempered. Like her son.
In other words, Dad’s a bully and a jerk. True, he’s made a very good living by scaring everyone around him. Except me. I stopped being afraid of him a couple of years ago. That’s when I realized that I might have to kill him someday. That’s when I realized that I could do it, no problemo.
This time Dad has good reason to be pissed. Not to mention actually fucking enraged. We’re in Dad’s house (not Mom’s, nobody would dare call it Mom’s house, or even their house), in Dad’s study, a recent addition. I could have predicted the decor. Dad’s taken the many animals he’s killed over the years, including the fish, and scattered them across the floor and the walls. His favorite is a wolverine he shot from a helicopter. He tells everyone that he likes to run his fingers through fur dense enough to endure fifty-below nights.
“I got to the motel at eight o’clock this morning,” I tell him, “right on time for the meetup. Only the cops were already there. Six or seven cruisers, an EMS truck, the coroner’s wagon, and maybe a dozen uniformed cops. The cops were searching the area around the entrance to Room 909.”
“Cabin 909, right? The Skyview don’t have rooms. They have cabins.” Dad scratches at his left ear, the one missing a lobe. “Try to get it right, Connor.”
Between the two of us, father and son, we manage a family business. We middle drugs and lend money at high interest. Call them payday loans, without the paperwork. We also put the arm on the hookers working nearby truck stops. The whores pay for protection, and they get it. We keep the pimps away. The girls are also an outlet for yours truly, whose wife left him a year ago. I’ve never blamed Trudy. In fact, I only wish she’d taken Mom with her, that the both of ’em escaped. This life I’m leadin’? It runs in only one direction.
Dad likes to think of himself as the king. Sitting on his throne, whispering orders to his son, the prince. That’s called plausible deniability. See, I’m the asshole who passes those orders to our crew. That way, if one of our boys turns rat, which sooner or later is sure to happen, it won’t come back on Dad. Unless, of course, I’m the boy who rats.
“I was pretty far away,” I continue. “Parked on the street at the other end of the motel. I couldn’t get too close because I didn’t wanna be asked what I was doin’ there. But I could see that our guy was there, too.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Standin’ around.”
“He wasn’t in charge?”
“Nope. The bitch was in charge. Lieutenant Mariola. Our guy looked to me like deadweight. Like he wanted to be somewhere else.”
I pause, but Dad waves me on.
“I texted our guy and met him a half hour later in the Kroger parkin’ lot. Bradley Grieg’s dead. He took one through the top of his skull, they’re thinkin’ while he was asleep. Like he never saw it coming.”
And for good reason, given the heroin and paraphernalia the cops found in the unit’s bathroom. For now, I’m keeping this to myself. I thought Brad’s junkie past was behind him. If I knew he’d relapsed, I would never have sent him up north. But convincing Dad is about as likely as either of us going to heaven.
“What about the money?” Dad has a tendency to repeat himself when he’s stirred up, and he does it now. “What about
the fuckin’ money?”
“I couldn’t really ask that question. Not directly.”
“Get to the point, Connor.” Dad’s tone hardens, another trick that leaves me unimpressed. “What about the money?”
“According to our guy, Mariola’s thinkin’ the motive was robbery. They found a fancy bag in the room, like a gym bag, only made of snakeskin.” I enjoy pushing Dad’s buttons, and I hesitate long enough for him to raise his eyebrows and tighten a mouth already as tight as a clenched fist. “The bag was open. Open and empty. The only money they found in the room was the hundred bucks in Brad’s pocket.”
The door opens and Mom walks in, bearing a tray with mugs of coffee and a plate of glazed doughnuts. The doughnuts, when I grab one, are still warm from the fryer.
“I thought you might like some coffee.”
The Yards Page 3