Dead Point (Maggie Blackthorne Book 1)

by LaVonne Griffin-Valade

  The old man’s Torino was parked in front of his dusty two-story house, and like the surrounding outbuildings, the house was a worn, weather-beaten mess. Sage, juniper, and cheat weed had overtaken the small orchard next to the barn, and the remains of fruit trees stood gnarled and wasted. The place appeared entirely absent of animal life: not a pig, a milk cow, a sheep, a chicken, or a dog. No beef cattle either.

  We climbed over the locked gate and strode down a short ravine to the house. The Trudeau family had raised Black Angus out here for generations. So finding Big T in such a state of ruin was a true shock. I wondered if Cecil Burney knew just how broke Guy Trudeau was.

  We knocked at the front door, called out for Trudeau, and knocked again. The weather had settled yet remained relentlessly glacial, despite sunlight filtering through the cloud mass. A frigid charge eased up my spine. I buttoned my peacoat and tried turning the doorknob to no avail.

  “You check that side of the house,” I indicated left, “and I’ll take the other.”

  We each snapped open our holsters and slowly stepped off the porch.

  I’d barely rounded the corner when Hollis called out, told me to meet him at the front door. “Man’s hanging in the middle of his kitchen,” he said and tried the knob again.

  “Step back. I’ll shoot the lock off.”

  “Try looking under the doormat first.”

  The key was hidden there, but the door was all but wedged shut by stacks of newspapers at least five feet high.

  We could see more heaps of newspapers inside, along with magazines and livestock exchange reports covering the floor and the ancient furniture, filling up the stairwell and cluttering the hallway. Trudeau was broke and a hoarder too.

  We zipped to the other side of the house hoping the key also worked on the back door, but it was locked from the inside. Around in front again, I squeezed through the small opening between the door and the piles of old news and pushed aside most of the crap blocking Holly’s way.

  In the kitchen, the table had been shoved to one side, a chair lay on the floor, and Guy Trudeau was suspended from the mounted light fixture. A belt had been cinched to the ceiling bolt and wrapped several times around the old man’s neck.

  Hollis took a small step back. “Shit. I always have a hard time with dead bodies.”

  “If there’s any cell signal out here, call Sam Damon. Let him know we need his hearse pronto.”

  I fetched the digital camera from my pack and snapped photos: different angles of the body, the makeshift noose, the furniture arrangement, and the junk piled everywhere. I centered the kitchen table under the light fixture—a fake wagon wheel with globes made of milk glass—and placed a chair on either side.

  “Sam’s on his way,” Hollis said, rejoining me in the kitchen.

  “Let’s lower the body to the table.”

  At least a good foot taller than me, he stood on one of the chair seats, leaned the dead man’s upper torso over his shoulder and began loosening the belt cinched around the ceiling bolt. Stabilizing myself, one boot on the second chair, the other boot on the table, I latched onto the dangling corpse.

  We leveraged the body toward the melamine tabletop. The wagon wheel light fixture swayed, the globes trembling furiously, until gravity seized control of Guy Trudeau’s lifeless remains. The old man’s body thudded to the table, where his head—eyes open and glaring—landed on my boot.

  “Good catch, Sarge.”

  “I see you got over your squeamishness.” I moved my boot gingerly from under Trudeau’s head.

  “Not really. Think I’ll find a blanket to cover him up until Sam gets here.”

  While Hollis looked for a blanket, I retrieved a pair of latex gloves and searched the kitchen. The larder was close to bare: salt, pepper, and a couple of other spices in one cupboard, a dozen cans of chicken noodle soup in the pantry. Bread, milk, and an apple in the refrigerator, along with a few beefsteaks and a venison roast in the freezer. Sparse as it was, I wouldn’t have thought it belonged to a man headed for suicide.

  Back with a coverlet polluted by filth, Hollis laid it over Trudeau’s face and most of his body. “I’ve been thinking, Maggie. I’m not sure how the old guy could’ve wrapped that belt around his neck and lashed it to the fixture bolt.”

  “What are you saying, Holly?”

  “Just seems odd is all. I think he’d have to be pretty strong to do both of those things standing on a chair. He’d have to cinch the belt tight around the bolt and tight around his neck for it to work. Plus he’d probably need to be taller.”

  I pulled a chair directly under the light, stood on it, rose up as high as I could, and reached for the ceiling bolt securing the light fixture in place. I was at least five inches too short.

  “You think he had help?”

  “I don’t know about help, exactly, but it doesn’t seem like he could do it on his own.”

  “Is this another murder?” I asked the stale kitchen air. “What the hell is happening in this county?”

  I drew up my phone and hit Bach’s number.

  “You have to go outside for service and walk up the ravine to where we’re parked,” Hollis said.

  “Start a search inside the house. I’ll be right back.” I hoofed it to my Tahoe, climbed inside, and punched in Bach’s number again.

  “Sergeant. I’ve been calling you for the last hour.”

  “Sorry, Detective. We’re out in backcountry. Cell service is always spotty.”

  “I’m on my way to your office. The two of us need to have a conversation.”

  “Trooper Jones and I came out here to talk to a couple of ranchers about the Nodine brothers, but I’m afraid we found one of them hanging from his kitchen light.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suicide?”

  “We have questions about that. That’s why I called. I think you should see this, Al.”

  “I’m driving Highway 20, about to make Burns and head north on 395.”

  “Good. You’re fairly close, then.” I laid out the directions to Big T.

  “I’ll contact the medical examiner, Sergeant,” he said and clicked off.

  Before heading back inside Trudeau’s house, I made a hasty call to Sam Damon.

  “Afternoon, Sergeant Blackthorne.”

  “Sam. We need to hold off on retrieval of the body for a while.”

  “I’m already about halfway there.”

  “Glad I caught you before you got any further. And sorry for the inconvenience. Think we’ll only be a few hours more.”

  “I’m still billing the State for my time.”

  “Fine, but you need to keep quiet about Mr. Trudeau’s death for now.”

  Hollis and I began searching the cluttered rooms, inspecting every cupboard, drawer, closet, bookcase, and gun rack. We sorted through heaping mounds of laundry—clean and dirty—examined every dun notice, receipt, legal document, and personal letter in his desk and file cabinet. And we looked behind and beneath the furniture and under every pillow and seat cushion. All of it pointed to Trudeau being a sad, dingy, bankrupt, and parsimonious old widower who was estranged from his children. A man who might kill himself.

  “His ankles and wrists weren’t tied. Don’t you think he’d have been kicking, swinging his fists, fighting against whoever was trying to kill him? And wouldn’t it have taken two people to wrap the belt around his neck, brace him up, and fasten the belt to that light fixture?” I asked Hollis. “At least two people.”

  “Let’s say he was murdered. Whoever did it would need it to look like Trudeau offed himself. Wouldn’t have tied his ankles or wrists, otherwise it’d be obvious he hadn’t climbed up there of his own accord.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just shoot him and make it look like an accident or a self-inflicted gunshot?”

  “I don’t know, Sarge. Cruel bastards? Or maybe they just meant to scare him some and things went haywire?”

  “How’d they get in—or out,
for that matter?”

  “Back door, I’d say. He let them in, or they found it open. When they left, they locked the back door from the inside and closed it behind them.”

  “So you agree with me. If he was murdered, there was more than one killer?”

  He nodded. “Assuming he was murdered.”

  “Which you’re convinced happened, right?”

  “Sure seems like it to me, but let’s wait for the ME.” He strolled from where we stood in the living room and opened the back door. “I need some air.”

  I followed him outside. “I know you question how he might have managed to get up there and hang himself with a belt. I don’t disagree, but I’m having a hard time seeing it as a murder. And yes, I know Ray Gattis or whoever works this case will give us the answer to that.”

  “Why are you thinking it was a suicide?” Hollis asked.

  “Trudeau was wealthy once. Owned a huge spread and a large herd of cattle. Then his wife died and all his kids moved away. Supposedly one of them later made off with his money. When I caught up with him the other day, he might have been hauling his last twenty-five or so head of Black Angus to the auction in Boise. All that starts to add up for a man like Guy Trudeau.”

  “Thought you said he was riding shotgun, making sure his animals got to market. That means one thing to me. He was going to make sure he got his money. I doubt that’s something a man would do if he planned to kill himself.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t find a buyer in Boise after all.”

  “That’s possible. Which would hold with your theory about him losing everything and deciding to kill himself.”

  “It’s a question for Jess Bennett when we see her tomorrow. Did she make it to Boise with Trudeau’s load of steers?” But as soon as I spoke the words, I sensed that no matter her answer, the three deaths were intertwined in some way.

  Detective Bach, Hollis, and I stood in the front yard of Guy Trudeau’s house where a vast garden of gladiolas, purple and bronze irises, and black-eyed Susan once thrived. Weeds, hard clay, and a rotted and wind-toppled cottonwood had replaced the flower plantings.

  “First mistake you made was to move the body, Sergeant.”

  Al’s officiously delivered statement was not to be taken literally; this was definitely not the first mistake I’d made in the short time the man had known me.

  Hollis, who had only just been introduced to Bach, stepped in behind me. “It appeared to be a clear case of suicide when we arrived, sir,” he said.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Al brushed a swath of dirt from the military crease of his slacks. “Procedure is clear. You wait until the medical examiner arrives before moving the body. Did you take photographs, at least?”

  “Of course.” I hoped I sounded as indignant as I’d intended.

  “I’ll look at those after I’ve seen the body.”

  “In the kitchen, but through the back door, not the front. You’ll see why when we get inside,” I said.

  Bach moved toward the rear of the house.

  Hollis nudged my shoulder. “Procedure or not, Maggie, I don’t think we did anything wrong. The nearest damn ME is two hundred miles away. Were we supposed to just leave him hanging there?”

  I signaled my agreement, and we followed Al to the kitchen. He stood over Trudeau’s body lying on the table, slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and examined the purple-red contusions ringing the dead man’s neck. “Extensive bruising.”

  “Fingernail scratches too,” I said.

  “Probably trying to loosen the belt as he swung.” Bach checked the contents of Trudeau’s pockets, exhumed a tattered wallet and a folded scrap of paper. After looking through the wallet and removing a driver’s license and three one-dollar bills, he unfolded the paper.

  I scanned it. “An invoice from Wilson’s Animal Clinic.”

  Several days before I’d pulled over the semi load of Trudeau’s cattle, Jen Wilson had written a prescription so the old man could treat his steers for something called Moraxella bovis. Sounded ghastly.

  “I don’t suppose he left a note?” Bach asked.

  “Didn’t find one. We searched the first floor pretty thoroughly, although we still have to go through the attic.”

  “Leaving no note doesn’t necessarily mean anything. How about any evidence of despondence?”

  “His wife died several years ago. Children, two sons and a daughter, no longer live in the area. He’s supposedly penniless, which shows in the condition of his ranch. Plus there’s the mess everywhere in the house. Put all that together, and it says something about the shambles his life was in,” I ventured.

  Al paced the first-floor rooms and surveyed the makings of Trudeau’s hoarder obsessions. “I see what you mean about the state of the house. I’ll take a look at those photos now.”

  He spent a good ten minutes scrolling back and forth through the shots I’d taken of Trudeau’s body suspended from the kitchen light, examined the fixture itself, and pulled the coverlet aside, exposing the corpse.

  “It is suspicious how he might have managed to hang himself with that belt.”

  “Hollis is more convinced it’s murder than I am.”

  “At least until we hear from the ME,” Hollis said.

  “Speaking of that, Dr. Gattis is arriving at the airport in about an hour. I’d appreciate one of you picking her up and driving her back out here.”

  Hollis volunteered to go, in part to allow me the courtesy of a private dressing down, which I was certain Bach was itching to hand me. I also knew it would give Holly an opportunity to check in on Lillian and the baby before he fetched Ray from the airport.

  I tossed Hollis the keys to my Tahoe. “It probably needs gas before you collect Dr. Gattis.”

  He nodded, departed through the back door, and trod quickly up the ravine.

  Al suggested we inspect the rest of Trudeau’s property before finishing our search of the house. The outbuildings were on the verge of collapse, except for the family’s monumental and once-famous barn. A masterpiece built out of fir and juniper, it had been featured in a ranch journal touting the great utilitarian architecture of the 1800s.

  As a young girl, I had toured the barn with my 4-H club and found it palatial, grand even. Years later after Zoey died, I fantasized about moving out of Tate’s tiny Nashua at the trailer park. I imagined living alone in the barn at Big T, secreted away in some obscure enclosure or dark corner of the hayloft.

  “I remember reading about that old barn,” Al said.

  “Looks a bit haggard now, but it was really something once.”

  The pasture spreading out from the barn was overgrown with thistle and surrounded by lax and forlorn barbed wire fencing that sagged between the listing posts and tumble-down rock jacks. We inspected the chicken coop and shop quickly and spent about an hour inside the barn. Finding nothing of note, we walked back to the house and sat on the porch steps in the sparse warmth of late winter sunlight.

  Bach plucked a long blade of grass from the dry sod. “You might have heard. Lieutenant Lake filed a complaint.”

  There it was, out in the open. Perhaps it was merely the long shadow cast by Trudeau’s massive barn, lit now by a slant of sun, but Al appeared drained, less assured. Less angry, too.

  “I wish you’d told me you once had a personal relationship with Lake.”

  I wondered why it had been deemed my responsibility to declare the possible conflict, not J.T.’s. “The whole thing was over long before he became my supervisor.”

  “More significantly, Lake questioned your leadership.”

  “I passed the sergeant’s exam. With flying colors.”

  “I know. I saw your file. But according to Corporal Macintyre, the lieutenant alluded to past bouts of severe depression.”

  For the second or third time in recent days, I wished I’d pulled the trigger and shot that motherfucker when I had the chance. But the violence in our short marriage remained our little secret. One neither of us would ever sp
eak of. I’d never disclose hitting rock bottom for a time or how I came by that scarred-over wound on my right shoulder. He’d never cop to his own brutality or his hatred of women.

  “I passed the police recruits psych exam too,” I said.

  “Yes. Corporal Macintyre ordered me to review your full personnel file.”

  “And?”

  “It sparkled. But me assuring the corporal about your character and police skills didn’t assuage his doubts. Your file has been flagged for the foreseeable future.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “No more promotions or choice of assignments until top brass removes the flag.”

  “And I have no recourse?”

  “The OSPOA would invoke your rights to due process.”

  “My union? You do know what organization we both work for, don’t you? And union or no union, invoking my rights is one thing, but representing me, being on my side, is quite another. Lady cops aren’t supposed to be mucking around in real police work. And if those bastards hear the words severe depression, I’ll become the butt of every ‘she’s always on the rag’ joke they ever tell.”

  Bach’s face and neck had reddened several shades, but he didn’t lash out. “Why do you care about all of that?”

  “Because I’m a damn good cop and I don’t plan on messing that up if I can avoid it. There will be no complaint to my union. I’ll tough it out. I’ve toughed out worse before.”

  “I believe it.”

  Desperate for something profound to utter and lessen the unease, I channeled Buddha. “Life follows a strange path sometimes, doesn’t it, Al.”

  “It does. We just have to do what we can to do right by our actions. But it’s not always easy.”

  “I think I’ve disappointed you.”

  “Because of circumstances beyond our control, Maggie, I took a risk handing you a lot of authority in the Nodine matter. And you took some risk accepting that challenge. But you haven’t disappointed me.”

  “What about the investigation?”