Dead Point (Maggie Blackthorne Book 1)

by LaVonne Griffin-Valade

  Bach shook his head. “Macintyre didn’t force me to take you off the case. And I would have argued against it if he had. The corporal is smart where his troops are concerned, so I have to assume he recognizes Lieutenant Lake’s…own issues. I’ll leave it at that.”

  I stared at the stinkbugs excavating the matted earth near my feet. “Sorry about the inappropriate language.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve said worse.”

  “What?”

  “I read your complete file, remember. You only had a single past complaint filed against you. One of your fellow recruits at the academy accused you of verbal abuse.”

  “Barnes, right?” He had been my partner on some exercise, and I’d warned him to get his ass in gear, or words to that effect.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever read a complaint with that many profanity redactions.”

  It was past time to change the subject. “I think I’ll search the attic now.”

  “I’ll join you.” He rose and followed me to the back door of the house.

  The attic was a roomy space filled with light, dust, forgotten furniture, and memorabilia. It contained two sets of bunk beds and looked to have been used as the bedroom for Trudeau’s two sons. Their photographs, 4-H awards, and sports team photos graced the walls and dresser tops. There was nothing indicating the old man had set foot there in the last twenty years, let alone used it to carry some of the weight of his cache of hoarded newspapers.

  We rummaged through the dressers and the two antique wardrobes that still held several articles of male adolescent clothing. I secretly coveted the Grant Union Prospectors letterman’s jacket with a chest patch that read “Pete,” indicating Trudeau’s oldest son. Other than that, we found nothing connected to the father’s death or his life these last several years among the brothers’ leftover personal effects or in the shelf of novels that stood in the far corner.

  The daughter’s room on the first floor had been left similarly undisturbed, as if the old man and his wife—while she was alive—had chosen to preserve the last remnants of their children’s childhoods so as to not crack the illusion of sustained kinship.

  While we searched the attic, we discussed my own childhood growing up in what Bach referred to as “God’s country.” We also talked of him being the oldest child in a large family from Twin Falls, Idaho, a clue that he’d grown up Mormon. So, I avoided hot-button topics, meaning politics and religion. I could smell conservative and God-fearing from a mile off, and he was both. His little affair with Ray Gattis aside, Al Bach walked the straight and narrow, and I needed to stay on his good side. Besides, I didn’t care what he believed as long as he was fair and professional.

  “You find bodies in the damnedest places, Sergeant Blackthorne,” Ray said when she and Hollis met up with us.

  “It’s becoming my specialty,” I answered.

  Inside Trudeau’s grimy kitchen, Doc flipped on every light possible and examined the old man’s body. “Trooper Jones tells me there’s some question this is suicide?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I know procedures say to leave everything in place until the ME arrives, but first officers on the scene of a possible suicide often forget that. Except on TV, of course,” she said, drawing back the coverlet. “A great deal of bruising, not necessarily uncommon in suicide by hanging. Are there photographs of the body as it hung?”

  I showed her the digital shots. “These will be clearer when viewed on a larger screen, Ray.”

  “I’m going to need better lighting to establish cause of death. Has Sam Damon been notified? I’d like to use his mortician’s table.”

  “Yes, but I called him off until you arrived.”

  “I’ll give him a heads-up,” Hollis said, stepping out.

  “Nothing official, but what do you think, Ray?” Bach asked.

  “I can see why there might be a question about it. A complicated way to loop the belt around the light fixture and his neck. And no note, right?”

  “Correct,” I said and explained Trudeau’s family troubles and financial demise. “I mostly come down on the side of suicide, but Hollis believes murder is more likely.”

  “Any thoughts on who might have a motive to kill Mr. Trudeau?” Al asked.

  “Like the Nodines, he might’ve had a few enemies,” I said.

  “But you still lean toward it being a suicide?” Doc Gattis asked.

  “I do. That’s why I’m glad you’re here to answer the question.”

  “Any sense of the time of death?” Bach asked Ray.

  “I’d estimate sometime within the last six to twelve hours. I need to run a couple of tests, though.”

  “I passed him on Highway 395 just yesterday. About two thirty or so in the afternoon,” I said. “Heading toward his ranch, I assumed.”

  Hollis reentered the kitchen. “Sam should be here in forty-five minutes.”

  Ray removed her latex gloves. “Would you mind taking me back into town now, Trooper Jones? I didn’t have time to pick up lunch before the flight, so I’d like to get something to eat before I start the autopsy.”

  “I’ll take you back, Ray,” Bach offered. “I need to check in at the motel and do some work from my laptop.”

  “You’re spending the night?” she asked.

  Al nodded, buttoned his coat, and turned to me. “You have the contact information for next of kin?”

  “I found an old address book. I’ll start there.”

  Dr. Gattis picked up her kit. “Since there was ill will between Mr. Trudeau and his children, let me confirm cause of death before you contact them, Maggie.”

  “Will do. And I’ll swing by the funeral home later to pick you up.”

  “Say between five thirty and six?”

  Al put on his cap and extended a hand to Hollis. “Nice meeting you, Trooper. I’ll see both of you tomorrow morning.”

  10

  Evening, February 24

  Hollis and I waited on the front porch for the undertaker. When he arrived, I walked up the ravine and opened the gate, directed him to the back door of the ranch house. The three of us wrapped the corpse in a body bag, placed it on a stretcher, and loaded it in Sam Damon’s hearse.

  As he’d done when he’d come to collect the Nodines, Sam asked for a moment of silence. Only the magpies objected, clamoring from the roof of the barn.

  I followed Sam’s hearse to 395 and down Canyon Mountain, dropped Holly off at the office, and headed to my apartment to check on Louie. When I opened the door, he wheezed from his pillow. Alarmed by the sound of his purr and his lethargy, I dialed the emergency number at Wilson’s Animal Clinic.

  After no one picked up, I tried Jen Wilson’s home phone listed in the twee local phone book. She didn’t answer that either, and I didn’t know her personal cell number, so I moved Louie and his pillow next to the heat vent and refreshed his food and water.

  I slipped downstairs to Dorie’s thrift store.

  “Maggie. How have you been, girl?” she said.

  “Working hard. How about you?”

  “Thank goodness Lynn’s sister is staying with her tonight. I’ve about run through my repertoire of chicken recipes. Take a load off?” She nodded toward her small living room.

  “No, I can’t. But could I ask a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Louie’s sick. Didn’t even eat the food I set out for him. I had no luck reaching Jen Wilson at home or at her clinic, and I don’t have her mobile number. Would you mind checking on him once in a while over the next few hours?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll see if I can track down Jen’s cell number too.”

  “Thanks.” I gave her a little smooch on the cheek and climbed back in my Chevy Tahoe. I was surprised she hadn’t offered to call together a prayer circle on Louie’s behalf. More surprising was the fact she didn’t seem to have gotten word yet about Guy Trudeau’s death.

  The office was quiet but for the beat of the analog clock hang
ing above the file cabinets. Hollis had left a second sticky note on my desk phone.

  “God, not another J.T. Lake clusterfuck,” I said to the still air.

  I snatched up the note: “Larkin filed a theft report with the sheriff. Asa Wakefield is listed in the OR Bar directory. Practices elder law.” That still didn’t prove that Larkin and Wakefield were one and the same.

  Retreating to the alcove, I stared at the Nodine murder board. There were so many lines of inquiry, I couldn’t keep track. We needed to pick one and go with it. But the list of unknowns was already too long, and there might be Trudeau’s death to factor in. And what did BRADY, the name found on the folded sticky note in the glove compartment of the Ram 3500, have to do with anything? Maybe nothing, maybe everything.

  Who was the kid Lynn Nodine had seen the twins handing over a case of beer to outside Chester’s Market? Dark hair, eighteen or so, maybe older. I could draw up a damn list of twenty or more boys who’d fit that description, including Duncan’s nephew, Rain McKay-Ferlinghetti.

  I was exhausted, mostly of spirit. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable and at risk of failure in some time, and I was too wrung out to start the Trudeau report. The last five days had left me edgy and oddly bereft.

  And then there was Duncan, suddenly in my life or a passing fling? Either way, I was losing my grip, the ironclad trap on my heart—the one I always counted on to keep honest emotion at bay.

  All of it made me fearful my well-practiced self-control would slip away in the middle of tomorrow’s funeral.

  I drove to Sam Damon’s Juniper Chapel Mortuary and Crematorium and found Ray in the chapel. She had turned the blond oak rostrum used by reverends and other funeral speakers into a makeshift desk for her laptop. The large Bible typically displayed prominently on top had been removed to the floor.

  With the cross and candle-lit altar behind her, the doc might have passed for a beatific figure in some ethereal sanctuary. She glanced up from her laptop as I entered the room and flashed a doleful smile. “You couldn’t wait another week to find that old man’s body?”

  “That would have been even more unpleasant.”

  “For you, maybe.” She massaged her temples. “Al and I called it off last night, and supposedly for good this time. So I could have used at least another week before being in close proximity, especially out here in the middle of nowhere in a motel room three doors down.”

  “Fate. It always tests a person.”

  “Fuck fate.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Good to see you, though.”

  “You too. So what can you tell me about Mr. Trudeau?”

  “Strangled with that belt. Foreign skin cells under his fingernails, and some of the bruising indicates he fought his killer.”

  “Murder for sure, then?”

  “Yes, and I’d speculate a large male, given the length of the belt. Mr. Trudeau was too lean to wear a size forty-six. But he was muscular for his age, which indicates he was too strong for even a really buff woman to choke him to death and haul him up there on her own.”

  “But a strong woman could assist, though?”

  “So could any healthy teenager.”

  “Strangling a senior citizen’s not my idea of anything healthy.”

  “See, that’s why I like you, Maggie. A lady cop always ready with a smartass retort, even when the subject is gruesome.”

  “A cop who didn’t need another damn murder in her district.”

  Sam Damon appeared in the aisle between the ten or so rows of pews. The kid I’d babysat had grown into a thin, reedy man who always seemed joyless and strangely sneaky. Never a good combination.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Gattis, Sergeant Blackthorne. I need to set up the sanctuary for tomorrow’s funeral.”

  “I’m finished for the time being, Sam. But I’d like to run another test tomorrow after the service.”

  On the way out of the building, Ray suggested we go to dinner.

  “God, if I tell you I have a sick cat and need to check on him, would you think me pathetic?”

  “Yeah. But I have an old Scottie dog, and I’d do the same. I suppose breakfast tomorrow morning is out too?”

  “I might have to take Louie to the vet first thing. And then there’s the funeral.”

  “Oh, yes. The funeral.” She paused for several moments. “I’m flying back tomorrow afternoon. Four o’clock. If you or Trooper Jones has the time, could you give me a lift? I prefer not to ask Al. This is already hard enough.”

  “One of us will get you to the airport.”

  Ray Gattis was the embodiment of sadness and regret when I dropped her off at Mack’s Motel. In my rearview mirror, I watched her pull a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She lit one and began to smoke it, leaning against the door of her room. Bach’s Ford Interceptor was parked less than ten feet away.

  Dorie met me outside after I parked next to her store and handed me a slip of paper. “Jen Wilson’s cell number.”

  “Thanks, D. How’s Louie?”

  “Tired of me bothering him, I think. He doesn’t seem any better or any worse than he was earlier, but he still didn’t eat anything.”

  “I really appreciate your checking on him.”

  Inside the apartment, Louie didn’t move from his pillow but offered up a brief tail wag. I picked him up, and we sat in the granny rocker. I added Jen’s number to my contacts and hit call.

  “This is Jen.”

  “Hi, Jen. Maggie Blackthorne. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but my old tabby is under the weather. Listless, croaky purr, can’t get him to eat.”

  Always a pleasant woman, she put me through a litany of questions regarding Louie’s symptoms. No runny nose or eyes, no vomiting or diarrhea, just the serious rasp, lethargy, and lack of appetite.

  “Remind me, how old is he?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “I was just about to sit down for supper, but I could meet you at my clinic in an hour.”

  Jen had built her animal clinic not too far from her house on acreage off Highway 26 along the John Day River.

  “Great. See you around seven thirty, then.”

  Even a treat from the kitty cupboard didn’t interest Louie. “What’s up, old boy? I’ve never seen you turn down one of these.”

  Jen Wilson was a gregarious woman who saw the world as largely good and kind, except where the mistreatment of animals was concerned. She was physically everything Ray Gattis was not: muscular and broad chested with short, platinum hair. Jen also sported tattoos and nose rings and always dressed in Carhartt coveralls.

  “Poor guy.” She plucked Louie from my arms and fetched a thermometer. “One-oh-four. Yep, he’s got a fever. Look at those droopy eyes. Dehydrated too. He’s definitely sick, Maggie.”

  “How sick?”

  “I don’t know. Considering his age, I want to keep him overnight and get him hydrated. I’ll check out the possibilities after that.”

  “Louie will have a fit about all of it.”

  “Not to worry, they don’t call me the cat lady for nothing.”

  I’d heard her referred to as the dog lady, the horse lady, and even the sheep lady, never the cat lady.

  “Don’t let this get around, but calling me any kind of lady is pretty far off the mark.” She laughed wildly at her self-deprecating joke, and I tried to muster a chuckle too.

  I watched her place Louie in a large cage.

  “He’ll be okay, Maggie.”

  I put on my police Stetson. “Be sure to say hi to Vicky.”

  “Will do. She’s on fancy steroids right now, getting ready for IVF.”

  “In vitro fertilization?”

  “Yep. Should turn out great. Hell, I’ve done hundreds of them on heifers. Works most every time.” That was about as much as I wanted to know about the procedure, but I was sure Jen and Vicky would be outstanding moms if all went well.

  Around nine o’clock back at the office, I set about contacting one of Trudeau’
s kids listed in that address book I’d uncovered. Pete, the son with the snazzy letterman’s jacket, was a teacher in southern Oregon last I’d heard. I tried the two numbers hen-scratched inside the front cover of the address book next to his name. After no one answered, I tried the single listing for the daughter, Melissa, just a year older than me. Her number was no longer in service.

  The same for Ronny, the middle boy, who always reminded me of the Nodine twins, except for having more money, more of everything, including an even greater affinity with bad behavior and petty crime. I figured him to be the one who’d absconded with his father’s money, if Cecil Burney’s rumor bore out.

  I put in a call to regional dispatch and made a request for an officer in southern Oregon to deliver the next-of-kin notification, assuming the address listed for Pete Trudeau in Medford was still accurate.

  It didn’t help my earlier mood any when I got to my apartment and found it was dark, oppressively cold, and empty. The milk in my refrigerator had gone sour, too, the odor seeping into the spare box I called home. I opened the front door to let in fresh, icy air, turned the heat on full blast, and buttoned up my peacoat. Next I poured the milk down the drain and rinsed the carton.

  The only calories I’d taken in were the breakfast at Erna’s and a pathetic grab-n-go sandwich for lunch. I was famished, but there was shit nothing to eat. Which meant I had to avoid the half bottle of red wine on my counter and the pint of gin in the cupboard.

  Unexpectedly, Duncan stood at the open door holding a pizza box. Was I hallucinating?

  “Maggie?” he said. “Are you trying to warm the outside air or chill down your apartment?”

  I wasn’t about to explain my cure for getting rid of sour-milk smell. “No, but you’re right on time.” I indicated the pizza. “I’m starving.”

  Duncan crossed the threshold into my apartment, closing the door behind him. He placed the steaming pizza box on the table and brought my cold, chapped hands to his warm lips. “I’m hungry too.”

  Midnight wind, the grizzled juniper battering my kitchen window, Duncan moved quietly from the bed. He dressed and carried the cold, half-eaten pizza from the table to the refrigerator. I pulled on a long flannel shirt and a pair of wool socks, swept up the two wine glasses, empty but for the magenta dregs of Merlot, and placed them in the sink. We kissed and he sat in the chair beside the small dining table, lacing his boots.