by Mike Markel
“Did he confess to killing Lake?”
“Not yet, but he will. Cory McDermott’s body was discovered out at this job site where Weber and his crew work. Plus, the construction manager saw Weber in the vicinity right at the time of the murder.”
“What was his motive?”
“It was Lake raping his daughter. We know Weber threatened Lake in front of a bunch of people. The other two victims? That was just cleanup. Because, in my experience, it’s very rare that a killer says, Yeah, I did it, and I’m willing to pay the price. Most killers are cowards, and they don’t want to be caught.”
“So you’re going to arrest Weber this afternoon?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
Ryan began to cough. “Excuse me,” he said. He turned away from us, coughing into his fist. I didn’t see him slide his phone down from his sleeve. Max didn’t see it, either.
“Where were we?” I said.
“You said you’re going to arrest Weber this afternoon.”
My phone rang at just the right time. I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and looked at the screen. “Excuse me a second.” I held up a finger. “I have to take this—it’s the manager at the construction site where Cory’s body was found.” I half-turned away from Max but spoke loud enough for him to hear me in the tunnel. “Yes, Mr. Stoughton.” I listened a bit. There was so much crowd noise I didn’t worry that Max would realize I wasn’t talking to anybody. It was enough that my phone was lit up. “Okay, Mr. Stoughton, that’s great. Appreciate it.” I ended the call.
I turned back to Max Thomas. “Could you just give me another second here? He said he sent me the CCTV video from when Cory was killed. It shows the pickup truck driving into the materials-storage area. It’s only, like, ten seconds, he said, but it shows the license plate clearly.”
Max stepped in toward me so fast I couldn’t duck out of the way. The last thing I saw was a huge forearm coming at my face. I felt the impact and my head snapped back. It lifted me off my feet, and I felt myself flying. Then I felt another crack as my head hit the concrete tunnel wall. I slid down the wall and collapsed onto the floor. My head started to buzz.
I got onto my hands and knees. Ryan was calling out my name. “I’m okay,” I said. “Go.” I grabbed at the concrete wall and struggled to my feet. Max had already run out of the tunnel; Ryan was following him, maybe twenty yards behind. I grabbed my phone off the tunnel floor and ran out into the sun and the noise. It sounded like thunderclaps, real close to me, one right after the other. The light was a thousand suns piercing my eyes. I had double vision and both images were blurry, but I thought I made out Ryan pursuing Max Thomas up the concrete steps in the stands.
I felt like I was going to pass out. Waves of nausea rose in my throat, and my legs were rubbery, but I kept going, pulling myself up the concrete steps with the metal handrail down the center of the aisle. The steps kept changing height, or at least it seemed that way to me. I pushed past people on the steps. I knocked one guy hard, and when his beer cup went flying out of his hand, he screamed “Bitch” into my face.
Max was headed full speed toward the Cougar Skybox, a big grey metal structure sitting on top of the bleachers. The Skybox, which housed a restaurant and the luxury boxes, was where the rich fans sat, warm and out of the weather, as they dined and watched the game through the glass.
I followed, as fast as I could, pushing past the people on the steps, falling farther behind every second. A door opened, and Max disappeared into the Skybox; a few seconds later, Ryan made it into the Skybox. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, I heaved the heavy door open and staggered inside, to where the boxes were.
There were clusters of comfortable arm chairs with attached tables, the clusters separated from each other by thin walls. The people in the boxes were standing, their expressions confused and concerned. “Where did they go?” I shouted. They pointed to the passageway that led to the restaurant.
I rushed in. Nobody was seated at the tables. Four students dressed in crisp white shirts and black slacks were setting up the tables in preparation for the formal meal service after the game. When they saw me, they pointed to the far end of the restaurant. I rushed in that direction. A hallway led to the bathrooms. Off to the side, a neon sign read, “Emergency Exit.” I pushed open the door. It was a metal staircase. I stood there a second on the metal steps, listening and trying to feel any vibrations in the metal handrail that would tell me whether they had gone up or down. Then I realized that Max was leading Ryan up onto the roof. He was going to kill Ryan up there.
I pulled myself up the long flight of stairs and burst through the door. The roof, covered in fine gravel, was cluttered with all kinds of vents and fans and AC condensers and other mechanical crap I couldn’t identify. I scanned the roof but didn’t see the two guys. I pulled my pistol, flicked off the safety, and got into a crouch.
It was ten seconds that felt like ten minutes before I spotted them, forty yards away, diagonally across the rooftop. I approached as quickly and quietly as I could, but they were moving around faster than I could keep up with them. I knew Ryan was expert at Krav Maga but had also studied karate. And I knew Max was a black belt in karate.
The two men were feeling each other out, about five yards apart, advancing and retreating together like fencers. I saw a lot of punches, most of them blocked. There was a flurry of front and side kicks, a few spin kicks. It didn’t look like either of the two guys was hurt badly. They seemed evenly matched. Every few seconds they would vanish behind some metal equipment sticking out of the roof.
When Ryan eased into the Krav Maga fighting stance, with his left leg forward and his arms bent, hands open in front of his face, I knew he had decided to attack. He rushed at Max Thomas, who retreated. The sounds of flesh hitting flesh mixed with grunting and groaning as the punches and kicks landed. They were in tight now, like boxers, and moving so quickly I couldn’t risk squeezing off a round. Ryan took a punch to the face, his head snapping back. I got into a boxer stance, left foot forward, the one they’d taught us in the academy, so I could take out Max if I had a clean shot.
The two men disappeared behind a big silver hunk of curved ductwork over near the edge of the roof. I couldn’t see either of them. As I was rushing to get into position to take a shot at Max, I heard a long, high-pitched scream that trailed off, then silence. I spun around but didn’t see anyone. I raced over to the raised edge of the roof, which was only about three feet tall, and leaned over.
Five stories below, on a ribbon of grass ringing the Skybox, a small crowd of people were gathered around a motionless body that had landed on top of a large nylon tailgate tent that had torn free of its support poles. I could barely make out “Cougar Athletic Association” written in large letters on the front of the tent. In the middle of the tent, partially covering the cougar logo, lay the victim, a circle of blood pooling under his head.
People were screaming, frantically pushing aside the picnic table, chairs, coolers, grills, and the generator that surrounded the tent. I grabbed my phone and dialed in the 911. My vision was still fuzzy. I couldn’t make out who the victim was. “Ryan,” I shouted. “Ryan.” Nobody on the ground seemed to hear me over the crowd noise and the metallic roar from the stadium speakers.
“What is it, Karen?” It came from behind me. I recognized Ryan’s voice immediately cutting through the din. I started to break down. I rushed over to him and hugged him. He groaned and pulled my arms off and pushed me away. “Think I’ve got a couple of fractured ribs.” His face was covered in pink bruises and welts. His left eye was starting to close up.
“Where the fuck was your pistol?”
“I came in to talk to the university president. I wasn’t planning to shoot him.”
“Probably half the people in the stands are carrying.” I slapped him as hard as I could on the arm. “Next time you leave the house without your pistol, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Understood, Detective.” Rya
n smiled, then winced and touched his jaw. “Ow.”
Chapter 32
Ryan and I rushed down to the Cougar Athletic Association tent. We set it up like a windbreak so that Max Thomas’s body was hidden from the dozens of fans streaming past. In a few minutes, the ambulance and a detail from the department arrived. We briefed the officers. They wanted to call in another ambulance to take us over to the hospital, but we decided it would be faster to walk the hundred yards back to the Charger and drive there ourselves.
Ryan insisted on driving in case I threw up or passed out or something. Now that the adrenaline had started to wear off, the pain settled in. I felt the cheekbone where Max Thomas slugged me; it was sore but not broken. I touched the golf-ball lump on the right side of my head, where I hit the tunnel wall. My head was pounding, the sunlight shining off car windows blinding. Ryan put on the lights but turned off the siren.
Any time a suspect hurts a cop in the line of duty, it’s a big deal. For one thing, the department has to figure out what kind of charge to add on to the existing charges. Even if the suspect is dead, you write it up anyway because sometimes the dead guy’s people will sue you for excessive force.
The other reason police departments take cop injuries seriously is that there can be issues about worker’s compensation or limited duty. The department needs to get all the medical facts out on the table in case there’s a question about whether the cop can return to work and, if so, when and in what capacity.
For those reasons, I didn’t fight it when Ryan told the attending ER doc what had happened to me and asked them to do a concussion workup. While a nurse led me off, I heard the doc ask Ryan what happened to him.
They put me in a wheelchair and rolled me over to get a CT scan and some kind of vision test. It involved watching a video through a machine while they looked at my eye movements through another machine to see if my two eyes were working together. Apparently, if your eyes don’t point in the same direction, that’s strong evidence of a concussion. I knew my eyes were screwed up because I still had double vision. Turns out I did have a concussion. They put me on some pain meds and gave me a few brochures telling me what to do about it.
While I sat around between procedures, I thought about Max Thomas. I’m not the kind of cop who gets all weepy when a killer goes down. I did wish we’d had a chance to talk with him about why he killed Lake, but I thought I understood the main outlines. Part of it, I’m sure, was that he believed he was protecting Alicia’s honor: If Lake’s video went public, it would hurt her. Part of it might have been jealousy. He had envied and hated Lake for more than seven years. Now Lake was back—and back in Alicia’s life. Maybe he thought he was losing Alicia to Lake a second time.
So he decided to kill Lake. He knew Cory McDermott from their days on the team. He must have approached Cory and lied to him about how Ronald Weber needed to get some uncut heroin to Lake in the homeless camp. Cory knew the perfect courier: Kendra Crimmons, a hopeless junkie without an ounce of curiosity or imagination. So Cory slipped some loser a few bucks to make the deal with Kendra under the overpass out at the skate park. She signed on, and Max delivered the heroin to her that night out at Ten Mile Park.
Then, when Max found out that Kendra hadn’t OD’ed with Lake and was talking to us, he realized he had to kill her. She was easy to find, and easy to lure into a truck. Then there was only one person left who could identify Max: Cory McDermott. At first, Max thought all he needed to do to keep Cory quiet was beat the crap out of him. But then Max learned that Coach Baxter, A.D. Freedlander, and even Carl Davis were getting all agitated about the cops talking to Cory. That was when Max decided he had to kill Cory right away.
I didn’t know when Max came up with the idea of framing Ronald Weber for Cory’s murder. Max knew that Weber was the team’s fixer, and that Cory was his main connection. And Max probably assumed a clueless woman cop like me would fall for the frame. Besides, framing Ronald Weber would be appropriate revenge. After all, instead of being a good father to Alicia seven years ago, Weber had decided to be the good team player in making sure Lake didn’t get in trouble and miss any games.
Sitting in the wheelchair in the hospital, my head pounding, I tried to figure out how I got everything so wrong about the case. I was pretty sure the football guys had killed Lake because he was going to do something that would hurt them. The theory made sense. After all, if Lake had dragged himself to one of the local TV stations and told his story on camera, there was no telling how badly that would have damaged the football program. There were thousands of local fans who remembered Lake when he could play. If they saw him in his present state, all busted up and incoherent, that would have been trouble. No, the football guys couldn’t take that risk. Lake would have to die a junkie, not a guy with CTE.
But that wasn’t what happened. The football guys—from Carl Davis to John Freedlander to Andy Baxter—were bad guys. Ryan and I were right about that. They broke every rule in the NCAA book, and they turned their backs on Lake, just as they turned their backs on any player who couldn’t help them anymore. But they were cold and calculating. Toss some cash at the players? No problem. Buy them recreational drugs? Of course. Arrange for some hookers when the high-school seniors came to town? Absolutely. Just do it quietly, and don’t write anything down. Cash is king. In plain envelopes, please. But kill someone? That wasn’t their style. They played the odds, weighed the risks. Better to slam the door in Lake’s face. He’d probably be dead in a few days, anyway.
No, killing Lake, and then Kendra and Cory, called for a passion the football guys didn’t have. They exploited passion, but they didn’t feel it themselves. Max Thomas felt it. Max Thomas—well-behaved, dependable Max—was still in love with Alicia and still hated Lake Williams. And he was still crazy. He was the killer.
My head was hurting pretty bad at this point, and I threw up a few times. A nurse saw I wasn’t doing too well and got me some kind of sedative and something to calm my stomach down. In a little while I drifted off into a restless sleep. The doctor admitted me, and I tried to settle in for the night.
A few hours later, Ryan called and we talked for a few minutes. He had been released earlier and had already briefed Chief Murtaugh. The department issued a statement saying that Max Thomas, a graduate student and a member of the Central Montana State University football staff, had died in a fall after assaulting two detectives and resisting arrest in connection with the murders of LaKadrian Williams, Kendra Crimmons, and Cory McDermott. The statement did not get into motive.
The doctor discharged me the next morning. Ryan and I were both cleared to return to work full time on Wednesday. That day, we met with the chief and Larry Klein, the prosecutor, to discuss how to wrap up the case. We had already told President Billingham that his guys were dirty, but that was before we got our hands on Alicia’s cellphone video of Lake’s meeting with her, and before Max Thomas died.
Larry wanted us to ask Alicia’s permission before we did anything with the video. We all agreed that was the right thing to do. I couldn’t quite follow the discussion about who actually had the legal right to use the video, but, as far as I was concerned, it was her property because she took the video on her phone.
I met with Alicia privately later in the week. It didn’t take any arm-twisting to get her to give us permission to hand the video to President Billingham. She knew that the football program was dirty—not dirty because it violated NCAA regulations or conference rules or anything like that. It was dirty in that it exploited the players. She told me to do whatever I wanted with the video; she trusted me on that. I told her that if President Billingham chose to make it public, it might upset her family. She thought about it for a moment. “If it does, it does,” she said.
The next day, the chief, Ryan, and I met with President Billingham, who sat there silently, his eyes wet with tears, as he watched the video of Lake stumbling through his story. We handed him the video and told him Alicia said he could do whatever he w
anted with it. When the chief asked him if he had any questions, the president said no in a quiet voice, thanked us for stopping by, and shook our hands.
A couple of days later, the university announced some personnel changes. Carl Davis was stepping down as president of the Cougar Athletic Association. Athletic Director John Freedlander was retiring, effective immediately. And Coach Andy Baxter had resigned. When the press questioned the coach in a news conference that aired that night, he said he wanted to pursue other opportunities, and he had decided not to take his salary for the remaining three and a half years of his five-year contract. The sports reporter said a lot of people were caught off guard when Coach Baxter announced he would resign in the middle of a successful season. But, the reporter said with a broad smile, nobody was surprised that a man of Andy Baxter’s character would give up his salary for the good of the university.
I never did find out how President Billingham got Coach Baxter to walk away from his remaining salary, but I assume that was the price the president exacted for not releasing the video of Lake.
I asked the chief if he was going to work with Larry Klein to bring any charges against Ronald Weber for distributing dangerous drugs and promoting prostitution. He said he made the offer, but Larry didn’t think there was much he could do unless Weber wanted to come in and give him a list of particulars of his crimes.
About a week later, Alicia Templeton called to invite me to go for coffee with her. I didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but I said yes. We met at a place near her office. She asked me about my injury and about Ryan.
“We’re fine.” The hissing from one of the fancy coffee machines drowned out the light jazz coming out of the speakers on the ceiling. “I’ve still got some headaches and sensitivity to light, but I’ll be okay. And my partner has some bruises and busted ribs. Hardest thing for him was not coming in to work for a few days.”