Perverted Justice

by Michael Arches

  I was as annoyed as anyone at the time, even though I hadn’t known much about the case. Ignorance didn’t keep me from being pissed off.

  On a hunch, I compared the date of sentencing to the date of her death. Three months. And she died on the exact same date as her son had a year earlier.

  Lenny’s voice cracked. “I’ve worked on some horrible cases, but this is my worst.”

  I’d gotten lucky over my career. Nothing this gut-wrenching.

  We sat silent for a moment, just staring at each other. But that wasn’t getting us anywhere. “You have any ideas on why the killer began picking victims in Aspen?”

  “Part of me says he hasn’t. Coincidences do happen.”

  I shook my head. “Our murders have at least two similarities. Not only is the drug-alcohol mixture the same, but they’re all obviously vigilante killings.”

  He shrugged. “Why would the murderer move to Aspen in the middle of his killing spree?”

  A kid with an ice cream cone walked toward us. Luckily, I pulled back on the mutt’s harness before the kid got close. His mom still glared at me.

  Lenny rolled his eyes. “My old yellow lab was just as annoying around food. He was twenty pounds overweight but always thought he was starving.”

  When my mind turned back to the investigation, I thought about another similarity. “No rational person would’ve thought these three deserved death.”

  “True. It’s a twisted world we live in.”

  One thing was clear. We were looking for an insane vigilante, perhaps with no criminal record. First offenders were always harder to find than habitual criminals.

  Chapter 12

  Before I headed back to Aspen, I sat in my SUV and read Lenny’s interview of Heather’s dad. The word horrible didn’t begin to describe his life. And after all the shit Heather had put him through—or maybe because of it—the dad had cried like a baby when he heard the news of his daughter’s death. I couldn’t imagine my dad shedding even a couple of tears if I got killed. Mom, on the other hand, I knew would mourn my passing. That was all I needed.

  My throat tightened so much I could barely breathe. Needed a moment to get control of my feelings. There were days when this job really sucked.

  After a five-minute mental health break playing with Boomer outside the vehicle, I continued reading. According to the interview notes, the dad had thought Heather was stone cold sober until she was dead. She’d lived with him, and he knew all the signs of a relapse. Their relationship had been better than ever…until it was suddenly over.

  If that story wasn’t depressing enough, on my way back to Aspen, I listened to the end of the Rockies game. They lost. End of season. No playoffs for them. What an altogether miserable day.

  -o-o-o-

  And the trouble kept on coming. As soon as I arrived back in the office, Jenkins pounced again. “I swear you’re hardly working. You’re campaigning on the people’s time. That’s probably a crime.”

  What a dickhead. “You really need to stay in touch with your chief deputy. You’re missing out on all the big news. Didn’t you hear about the crazy vigilante terrorizing our happy little town?”

  Apparently not. Most of his body froze, but his mouth opened and shut like a carp out of water. No words came out, just a gurgle.

  I couldn’t resist taking another shot. “Yeah, all your powerful buddies are going to freak out, man. Talk about horrible publicity. This could kill the Aspen money machine, and right before ski season!”

  That last crack snapped him out of his coma. “You’re a lunatic. You can’t even hint to the press about some vigilante. I’ll consider any such public comment to be grounds for immediate termination.”

  The tightness of his face and his wide-open eyes told me he’d never imagined this kind of tsunami could crash down on us. I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t thought we’d get a reputation as a murder hotspot either.

  He shook his finger at me but didn’t speak. Boomer growled, but I kept a firm grip on him.

  “You can try to fire me,” I said, “but you’re also going to have to shut up Longfellow. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. He’s directly elected by the voters, just like you. He’s the one who first clued me in to the vigilante, by the way.”

  “The cutter’s hallucinating. Some crazy flashback from his hippie days.”

  “Then, so is the Mesa County Coroner and the Grand Junction Chief of Police. Turns out they have a recent murder with several similarities to ours, including that drug combo. We have a self-righteous nut on the loose. I discussed our case with a Grand Junction detective and brought back a copy of his file. Very similar fact patterns. Care to peruse it?”

  Jenkins wandered off in a daze toward Randy’s office. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for that meeting, but I’d used up my magical transformation potion. And I had too much work to do anyway.

  The key problem was going to be finding one person who, as my Gramma Morgan liked to say, “wasn’t right in the head” hiding out in a sea of others. Thousands of mentally ill lived on the Western Slope.

  -o-o-o-

  I carefully reviewed the whole Langley file, but nothing else caught me by surprise. By the time I finished, my eyes were crossing. I called it a day.

  On my way out the door, Jason called. “I now know why that pickup’s driver committed suicide-by-cop. He was carrying a kilo of pure crystal meth and five kilos of coke. Fool drove straight through from LA. Somewhere along the way, he started dipping into the product to keep on truckin’. His brain was mush by the time he stopped for gas and stole that beer.”

  “Even a mushy brain knows better than to plow into another vehicle head-on,” I said.

  “That was straight-up suicide. He didn’t want to explain to his cartel boss how he’d lost all those drugs. They would’ve paid his bail just for the pleasure of torturing the shit out of him.”

  Jason was right. He’d seen the world through the dead man’s eyes when I hadn’t. That was a key talent a police detective needed to nurture.

  Boomer and I finally made it back home. I told Willow how my murder case had taken a sharp left turn into the Twilight Zone. She listened and asked few questions, but her face got longer as I spoke.

  When I finished, she asked, “Is it possible that you’re in over your head? That’s the correct expression, yes?”

  I burst out in hysterical laughter. “It’s not only possible. It’s certain. I tried to get the FBI interested in the case, but nope. Carson swears they don’t have jurisdiction over most murders, just those involving public officials.”

  “Surely, some other agency can help?”

  I rattled off the usual suspects and explained why each was already doing what they could. Basically, we’d have to solve this one the old-fashioned way—by stumbling along until a key bit of evidence fell in our laps.

  Before heading to bed, I checked in with the two guards protecting us overnight. This time, they brought a Belgian Malinois to patrol outside with one of them while the other manned an indoor security office. I slept better knowing Willow and I were well protected.

  -o-o-o-

  In the morning, I realized our best chance to track down the vigilante would be if he’d already spewed his frustration about the criminal justice system to some public entity. That probably meant a government agency or the news media. And we needed to check social media, too. Shermie and Heather must’ve had lots of haters on Facebook and other sites. The key element of our search needed to be that the frustrated person wanted to take the law into his own hands.

  I had a new trail to follow, but I knew few details about the killer we were chasing. That made it almost impossible for me to eliminate most unstable people. Mental illness was ridiculously common in these United States.

  When Boomer and I arrived at the office, Linda and I contacted each news media and city or county office within a hundred miles and asked for details about people who’d threa
tened violence against some criminal who’d gotten away with a notorious crime.

  We soon learned there were too many examples to count, so we limited the time frame to comments made within the last year. That still left over two hundred suspects. That number doubled when we included social media posts including threats of violence against Shermie and Heather. Willow helped us find lots of those folks.

  Linda and I began winnowing out those who couldn’t have committed one or more of the murders. We were convinced they’d been performed by the same hand. The most common reason we eliminated someone was the suspect had been in jail or in a mental health facility on the afternoon when Shermie died. Incarceration cut our list by more than half.

  The second biggest reason we excluded someone was that they were too disabled to walk. I hadn’t realized how much homebound people love to rant. But whoever had shot Shermie had walked quite a way up a moderately steep hillside. That element cut out over a hundred and fifty more folks.

  The winnowing process worked surprisingly well. We cut our list down to forty-seven folks whom we’d have to personally interview.

  Inside Pitkin County, we could just show up and fire questions at a suspect. For our targets in neighboring counties, though, we’d need to coordinate with the local sheriff’s office.

  I hoped Lenny and other cops in Grand Junction would take the lead in Mesa County. It had far more residents than Pitkin County. But before I could create a joint task force, I had to clear it with the brass here.

  I headed to Randy’s office. Because he was the chief deputy, he had an individual office with a glass wall that looked out on the open room where us peons worked. I approached until I noticed he was on the phone. He waved me in anyway. I sat while he fought over our office’s budget with someone from the county commissioners’ office.

  After he hung up, he muttered, “Morons.”

  All I could think of in response was, Better that you deal with them than me. I’m too likely to strangle one of them.

  I explained how much effort we’d have to put into interviewing forty-seven potential vigilantes within a hundred miles of us. Then, I said, “This isn’t just our problem. GJPD wants to clear the murder there. I was hoping we could talk to their chief and split up the work.”

  “Worth a try. You know Scooter?”

  Scooter Jackson was a flamboyant, long-time police chief for that city. Wore a giant white Stetson and a fat, black, handlebar mustache. “Nope, but I’ve seen him on TV.”

  Randy nodded. “He’s the same in private. Generally, a good partner, but don’t get between him and a camera. Let’s ring him up.”

  The chief deputy put his phone on speaker and called. Scooter’s secretary put us on hold for a minute, then said, “He can call you back in fifteen.”

  -o-o-o-

  It was more like a half-hour, but Randy and I worked on emails while we waited. Scooter and Lenny called together. We talked over what we knew about the three murders connected by doses of Seconal mixed with tequila.

  When we finished, Scooter said, “One thing for dang sure, we need to get a press release out warning the public about this vigilante terrorizing our communities.”

  Randy’s mouth and eyes opened wide. “Whoa, Chief, the last thing the powers that be will want around here is us scaring off potential tourists. We need to keep this quiet until we find the bastard.”

  “We’re working with you on that,” Scooter said, “but this is a genuine public safety emergency. We gotta warn the citizenry.”

  I happened to agree with him, but Randy was right, too. Our commissioners had made their priority loud and clear—keep rich folks coming to town.

  Eventually Randy and Scooter agreed to disagree. The police chief decided to put out a press release but we wouldn’t. I had no idea what Jenkins would say when the press asked him about GJPD’s release and noted the connection to two similar crimes in Aspen. That was Randy’s problem.

  On the plus side, GJPD had a much larger staff than we did, and they agreed to contribute five cops, including Lenny, to the interview process. We each agreed to cover all the suspects in our respective counties, and Grand Junction would take two thirds of the other folks on my list of those threatening violence.

  Scooter was being more than fair, and Randy and I immediately agreed to his proposed division of labor. Now, instead of Linda and me talking to thirty-seven people, we had only eleven. Six for me, and five for her. Hooray!

  There was nothing I loved more than cooperation among law enforcement. It was a righteous thing. I just cringed as I thought of how Jenkins would react to Scooter’s press release.

  -o-o-o-

  The first person on my list of assigned suspects lived in Avon. For once, I got lucky. An Eagle County deputy was available to help me right away. I jumped in my departmental SUV with my faithful sidekick Boomer. We drove for over an hour.

  The mutt was pissed because I wouldn’t let him stick his head out the window at seventy-five miles per hour. The thought of a bug hitting him in the eye made my skin crawl. I ignored his whimpering. Had more important things to worry about, like how to confront a violent lunatic.

  Like most cops, I had to interact quite a bit with the mentally ill. I tried to be sensitive to their illness, and thankfully, most were harmless. But my sensitivity ended when someone started to threaten to hurt someone else. Too many cops could tell horror stories that started with, I went to see this nutty guy threatening someone with a…

  Avon had a reputation as being a cut-rate place to stay while skiing at Vail or Beaver Creek, but one development north of town was different. A female deputy from Eagle County met me at a spectacular house up on a hillside. It would’ve cost at least fifteen million near Aspen. Had a great view of the mountains to the south, including the Beaver Creek ski resort.

  I’d come to talk to a thirty-nine-year-old former Silicon Valley software developer. He’d taken an unfortunate dive into schizophrenia. He now claimed to be western Colorado’s Lord High Executioner, and he’d mailed a hit list to the local police department. They naturally began the process of having him committed but eventually allowed him to stay out because he paid for a full-time guard to watch him, and he wore an ankle monitor.

  His Lordship had supposedly been at home all last Saturday afternoon, but I wanted to be sure the guard confirmed that and that the monitor hadn’t been tampered with.

  It quickly became apparent the suspect knew how to play his part. When I knocked on the door, he answered dressed entirely in black, including a hood. He held a broad ax in his left hand, but thank God, it was plastic. The guard who stood behind him shrugged.

  I asked His Lordship to pull his hood back so we could confirm his identity. He did, but first he had to hand me his weapon. His right hand was in a cast from his fingertips past his elbow, and that arm was tucked into a sling.

  In short, no bow hunting for His Lordship. And while we were there, I confirmed that his ankle monitor hadn’t been tampered with.

  One down and five to go.

  -o-o-o-

  Boomer and I didn’t get home until after dark, but Willow was kind enough to save us some of the pork tenderloin she’d grilled on the back deck. I felt guilty about neglecting our relationship, particularly after she’d wondered about how dangerous my job was. God, how I hoped she wasn’t looking for someone better to shack up with.

  To minimize that chance, I watched back-to-back episodes of her favorite TV show, Project Runway. The things I’d do for love.

  -o-o-o-

  I woke up early the next morning, already thinking about taking on the next crazy person on my list. Alfred Gregor lived outside of Carbondale. He didn’t dress in costumes, but the local cops suspected him of killing a family of four whose car had broken down near his ranch. They were never seen again, but the cops had no proof Gregor had even seen the family, much less harmed them.

  The main reason the locals suspected Gregor was
that he’d come back from the Iraqi war with a few pieces missing, both mentally and physically. Early in his second tour of duty, he’d been captured by Sunni extremists. They held him for only two days, but they’d emasculated him for not fighting to the death.

  By the time he made it stateside, he was ready to kill any Arab he spotted. The VA forced him into intensive psychological therapy, and he was locked up in a secure facility for two years. His treatment included powerful drugs, and by the time he was discharged, he could barely remember his own name. And he wasn’t making death threats anymore.

  When he got back home, his adult daughter began visiting his ranch twice a week to make sure he took his meds—until one day, he threatened to kill her. Garfield County’s health department took over the monitoring, but Gregor continued to act unpredictably.

  Most recently, he’d begun making vague threats of retaliation against the local sheriff, claiming he was really a demon poisoning Gregor while ignoring real criminals. That put him on my radar screen.

  While I was visiting Avon, Linda discovered that Gregor owned a four-horse trailer and several horses. That shot him to the top of my list. Of course, lots of ranchers in Colorado fit the same bill, including my dad, but most didn’t send threatening letters to their local sheriff.

  For once, I left Boomer at home. Our suspect was known to own several large pit bulls, and my dog was no fighter.

  I’d arranged to meet a Garfield County deputy early that Sunday morning outside Gregor’s ranch, but as I drove toward Carbondale, the deputy called me. “Sorry, Hank, but two of our staff just called in sick. I’m being diverted to one of the churches in Carbondale. A kid supposedly brought a hunting knife to his Sunday school class for show and tell. Probably an innocent mistake, but who knows these days?”

  “No problem,” I said, although the last-minute change left me in an awkward spot. I didn’t want to reschedule, and I wasn’t about to face Gregor alone. “Skip lives close by. I’ll see if he can back me up.”