Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1)

by Victor Methos

  One of the women he recognized from the other night. He stopped and offered her a twenty-dollar bill. She took it without asking what it was for and shoved it into her bra.

  “Where’s Candi?”

  “You ain’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “She outta the game for a while. Got beat up by some john and spent the night in the hospital. Gave her thirty stitches in the face. Ain’t no one gonna hire a whore lookin’ like Frankenstein.”

  Baudin tossed the cigarette. “Where is she?”

  “Home.”

  “I need to know where that is.”

  She folded her arms in a gesture of defiance. He took out another twenty and handed it to her.

  “She’s at the motel. One of the rooms on the first level. I don’t remember which one.”

  He hurried back, pushing his way through two girls who stood in front of him, asking him something about a party. A man with glasses was eating Chinese food out of a carton in the motel office. Baudin stepped to the counter, but the man didn’t look up from his food.

  “Excuse me,” Baudin said, showing him the tin. “Candi Carlson, please.”

  “What you want with her?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Well, then, maybe her room ain’t none of your damn business.”

  Baudin chuckled. The fact that this man was fighting him on this at this time was unbelievable. Life, he had always been convinced, had a sense of humor.

  “Your tongue has a green tint.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So there’s nothing green in that fried rice you’re eating. Weird thing for a tongue to be green. Only thing I ever seen do that is someone smoking a joint. Burns the tongue a light green in some people for a good half hour afterward. How much weed am I gonna find I start going through this desk of yours?”

  The man swallowed and set the carton down. “She’s in 112.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  Baudin left the office, pushing the door so hard it hit the wall and bounced back. He strode to room 112 and put his ear to the door, hearing a television—canned laughter from a sitcom coming through at regular beats. He knocked with the back of his fist, but no one answered.

  “Candi, it’s Ethan Baudin. Answer the door.”

  For a good thirty seconds, nothing happened. Then he heard the chain slide off the door and the lock click open. The door opened a crack, revealing a bruised and battered face.

  She had a large black eye, the bruising reaching halfway down her nose. Her lips were swollen and cut, and down the side of her cheek was a pattern of stitches like two pieces of cloth sewn together badly.

  “What happened?” he said.

  She swallowed, unable to look him in the eyes. “Just the cost of doing business, I guess,” she said gently.

  “That’s bullshit. Who did this?”

  “I don’t want no trouble with him. He’s a big man around here. He owns a lotta businesses, knows the mayor personally… I don’t want trouble with him. It’s done and over with, anyway. Arrestin’ him ain’t gonna do nothin’.”

  He exhaled, watching the way the light reflected off the eye surrounded by bruising. “You need money?”

  “I got a little saved up. Hopefully won’t be too much of a scar that I can’t cover with base.”

  Baudin nodded, looking over as someone left their room and hurried to their car. “Who’s the bigwig? I promise I won’t arrest him. Just wanna know who he is so he’s on my radar.”

  “Ted Holdman. He owns a buncha gas stations. That’s how he made his money.”

  He reached up slowly, gently laying his fingers on her cheek. She kept her eyes low.

  “Will you… I mean, do you want to come in?”

  “No, I got work to do. I came by to see if you got a chance to show those pictures around.”

  “Oh, yeah, I was gonna call you before… well, before everything. One of the girls said she saw something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I think she said she saw a picture in some john’s car. Picture of that girl.”

  A quick shot of adrenaline raced through him as if he’d injected it. “What girl?”

  “Dazzle. She should be on the corner now. She’s black, straight hair, real pretty.”

  “Dazzle?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Baudin took out his wallet, but she put her hand on it. “No,” she said. “You don’t need to pay me. I just… well, you’re nice to me.” She smiled shyly. “I think you’re the first person in my life that’s been genuinely nice to me.”

  Baudin held her gaze, absorbing the sadness and tragedy of her words. He leaned in close, kissed her on the cheek, and rushed back to the street.

  Several girls stood near the motel. He wasn’t in the mood for niceties and conversation. He grabbed the first one, spun her around to the shock of the other two, and slapped cuffs on her. One of the women pulled out her phone, and he held up his badge.

  “One of two things is gonna happen,” he said. “I’m taking all three of you in, or you’re gonna point out Dazzle to me.”

  The two girls left standing glanced to each other. One of them said, “She ain’t here now. She gone all night. But she be here tomorrow.”

  Baudin hesitated and then took the cuffs off before letting the girl go. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll make sure you’re locked up as long as I can get. No money comin’ in. Get me?”

  “Yeah, we got you.”

  Baudin went back to his car, watching the gray-black clouds slowly drift past the crescent moon.

  17

  The precinct on a Friday evening was about as empty as it ever got. Dixon signed some files before he put them in a bin where the secretary would forward them to the screening team at the District Attorney’s Office.

  The front desk had someone at it twenty-four hours a day. Tonight it was Martha, an older woman with her hair up in a poof. She wore a plastic sheath over it when it rained. He went over after checking the coffee and finding it cold. He tossed the cup in her trash.

  “We got anything?” he asked.

  “A lotta interesting people calling about your Jane Doe.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “Well, they said they saw it on the news, and they know her.”

  “How many?”

  “’Bout fifteen of ’em.”

  He nodded. “Email me the info, and I’ll follow up.”

  Dixon was heading out of the doors when she added, “One of them said her son did it.”

  He stopped. “She said what?”

  “She said her son killed her.”

  He returned to the desk and set his hands against it. “Give me that one now, please.” After Martha printed out the woman’s name and address, Dixon headed out of the precinct, took out his phone, and dialed Baudin.

  “Yeah,” Baudin said.

  “Had someone respond to the broadcast sayin’ her son killed our Jane Doe. I’m gonna head over there now.”

  “Gimme the address.”

  Dixon was the first to pull up to the trailer. It looked like any other double-wide in the trailer park. Dixon had been to this park several times before as a beat cop. Domestic violence was common, as were drunk and disorderly and methamphetamine charges. Many junkies found it a safe haven, since the cops didn’t patrol around the park and only came when someone called them. Usually the uniforms didn’t put much effort into the investigation. The abuser in a domestic violence situation there would be the victim next week and then the abuser again the week after that. After a year or so on the beat, cops got jaded and got out of this place as fast as they could.

  Baudin pulled up behind him and stepped out. Dixon grabbed his suit coat from the passenger seat.

  “Who is she?” Baudin asked.

  “Ran her name through Spillman. Nothin’. No history whatsoever. Ran the son’s name, too. Same thing. No history.”

  “Well, that doesn�
�t mean anything. Sometimes these guys can go for years without doing anything. That gives them a lotta time to fantasize and plan. They’re good at what they do.”

  “You sound like you admire them.”

  “I just think it’s interesting, that’s all. That moment when someone decides the universe is chaos and they’re gonna be part of that chaos.”

  “Shit. They’re nothin’ but horny fuckers with mommy issues.”

  Baudin grinned. “We’re all horny fuckers with mommy issues. That don’t make us killers. This it?”

  “That’s it.”

  They walked along the road winding through the trailer park. The double-wide of Vickie Connors was tucked away in a corner. Even in the dark, Dixon could see the equipment in the small playground next to it was coated with rust.

  The stairs leading up to the door could only fit one person at a time, and Dixon took them and knocked.

  Vickie Connors wore glasses so thick that Dixon was amazed they didn’t fall right off her thin face. Her hair was a black-gray from a bad dye job, and she had yellowed teeth.

  “What?”

  “I’m Detective Kyle Dixon with the Cheyenne PD. We got a call from this address regarding a photo that was run on the news tonight.”

  “Yeah. Come in, I guess.”

  The interior was cluttered to the point that Dixon didn’t know if he could find a place to sit. Old wrappers and paper cartons covered the couch. The single table in the trailer could barely be seen through the pile of dishes and cups sitting on it, all of them coated with rotted food and dust. The place smelled putrid, like the city dump on a hot day.

  “Ma’am, is your son here?”

  “Bobby? Oh, no. He’s over in WSP.”

  Dixon glanced back at Baudin, who was scanning a small bookshelf against the wall. “He’s in prison?” Dixon said.

  “Yeah. I keep going to that parole board and telling them my Bobby’s a good boy. That’s what I say. And I got a letter from our pastor about what a good boy Bobby was growin’ up and how it’s just plain unfair they keepin’ him in there.”

  Dixon pulled out his phone and its note-taking app. “How long he been inside?”

  “Oh, let’s see now… Two years and three months. That’s right.”

  “I didn’t find a history for him.”

  “Oh, he got lotsa names. Lotsa names. His real name is Richard Bellows, after his daddy. Then he had an adopted daddy, my second husband, and then my maiden name, Connors, and his adopted daddy liked calling him by his middle name, Bobby.”

  Dixon slipped his phone back in his pocket. “Well, we’ll follow up with him.” He put his hands on his hips, glancing around the trailer. “Why do you think your Bobby killed that girl?”

  “I didn’t say he killed her. I said he knew her. I seen her a few times. Nice girl.”

  Dixon’s stomach dropped, and that familiar thrill of the chase sent shivers up his spine. He had to remind himself that this was probably nothing. This woman was likely delusional, and anything she told them was immediately suspect. Still, delusional didn’t mean lying.

  “How did he know her?” Baudin asked.

  “They were an item. Cute couple. They’d do everything together. But he went away, and she moved on. Used to call and check up on me, sweet thing.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “Alli was her first name. I don’t know her last.”

  Dixon glanced at Baudin, who was scanning the interior of the trailer. “You sure about that?” Baudin said.

  “Positive. Alli. She would call and check up on me.”

  “Do you remember where she lives or have her phone number?” Dixon said.

  “No, no… I don’t have none of that no more. My Bobby might remember.”

  Underneath the table, Dixon noticed an amber bottle of prescription pills. He bent down. The bottle was empty and expired almost a year ago. The label said it was Saphris.

  “It’s an anti-psychotic,” Baudin said, seemingly reading his mind. He looked at her. “Are you out of medication, ma’am?”

  “Oh, no, no… I don’t want no pills. Not no more. Don’t need ’em.”

  Baudin nodded, taking a final look around the trailer. “Thank you for your help.”

  He stepped out of the trailer, and Dixon followed, asking, “You wanna head up to WSP on Monday?”

  “I think we should go now.”

  He exhaled. “Lemme call my wife and tell her I’m gonna be late.”

  18

  The Wyoming State Penitentiary sat on sixty worthless acres. The compound was a two-hour drive into the wasteland, away from places people might congregate. Dixon remembered that when it had first been built, no one thought it would stick around for long. It was too out of the way. The buses shuttling prisoners to and from court would eat up too much gas, or the guards wouldn’t want to drive that far, or a whole boatload of other reasons people thought it wasn’t going to work.

  Not only had it worked, it’d become a model of how states should run prisons: clean and efficient, with no amenities. The warden wanted to make sure not a single prisoner ever wanted to come back. He wasn’t cruel, at least not that Dixon had heard; he just denied everyone the simple pleasures. Like television, working out, writing, or drawing.

  Baudin drove and was waved through the gate after the guards inspected their ID badges and called somewhere to confirm them. The guest parking lot was nearly empty. Dixon stepped out of the car, and immediately the warm rush of desert air hit him. Later on, the warm air would turn so cold that the guards on patrol on the perimeter would have to wear coats. He had never understood how the desert could be hot during the day and ice-cold at night.

  A path led to the front entrance, and the doors buzzed and opened for them. At the solid-concrete façade of a counter to the right, a guard pushed a clipboard in front of them. Both of them signed it.

  “Who you need?” the guard said.

  The glass edges of the metal doors leading into the prison allowed Dixon to see through. “Bobby Connors, or maybe Bellows.”

  The guard scrolled through his computer. “Richard Robert Bellows, twenty-six years old. That him?”

  “That’s him.”

  “I’ll buzz ya in.”

  They waited as the doors slid open and disappeared into the walls. Inside, a guard nodded at them as they went past. Down the corridor was another door with metal detectors and two guards, leading to the general-population cells. To the left was protective custody, where they kept informants and sex offenders—people likely to be harmed by those in the gen pop. And to the right, where Dixon led Baudin, were the visiting rooms.

  Though the general public had to meet with prisoners through bulletproof glass and spoke into a phone, detectives could have contact visits, meaning they were seated in the same room. The two of them entered visiting room two and sat at a conference table.

  “This is nicer than the prisons I’ve been to,” Baudin said.

  “Guess it depends on what you mean by nice.”

  Baudin looked at the conference table. “If this is him, we’ll know it right away.”

  “Just by lookin’ at him?”

  Baudin shook his head, his eyes never leaving the table. “No. He’ll be superficially charming. One of the most charming people you’ll ever meet. So charming that an alarm will go off in your head that something’s off about this guy. He’s too nice, too good looking, says all the right things. You’ll feel that it’s him.”

  “That ever happen to you?”

  “Once. Dupas, that man I told you about. I’d interviewed him as part of the investigation and cleared him. But something didn’t sit right with me. He had an alibi and seemed like a kindly old man, but bells were going off in my head when he was talking, like blood was seeping out of his eyes as he spoke, and no one could see it but me. I didn’t follow my gut, though. We had other people good for it. I won’t let that happen again.”

  The door opened on the other side of
the room, and a prisoner in a white jumpsuit, shackled at the wrists and ankles, was led in by a guard. He sat at the table across from the two detectives.

  “We got him,” Dixon said to the guard.

  The guard stepped out of the room and shut the door. Dixon watched the prisoner for a second before Baudin rose and began pacing the room.

  “Bobby, how are ya?” Dixon said with a wide smile. “My name is Kyle, and this is Ethan. We’re with the Cheyenne PD. Just had some questions for you. Hope we ain’t pullin’ you away from anything.”

  Bobby looked back at the door where the guard had left. “You guys got any rings?”

  “Rings?”

  “Yeah. You wanna talk, you gotta gimme a ring. Or a cigarette.”

  “What do you want a ring for?”

  Baudin said, “They make tips for shanks. Metal you can sharpen’s hard to find in here, ain’t it, Bobby?”

  “Ring or cigarette if you wanna talk.”

  Baudin slipped out the package of cigarettes in his pocket. He put one in his mouth and lit it with a match. Then he put one in Bobby’s mouth and lit that with another match before placing the package in the single breast pocket of the prison jumpsuit.

  “We cool?” Baudin said.

  “We cool,” he said, inhaling and blowing it out to the side. “What you guys need?”

  Dixon pulled up the photo of Jane Doe on his phone, the doctored photo of what she would have looked like alive. He handed Bobby the phone.

  “You know her?” Baudin said.

  “Yeah, man. What she do now?”

  “Who is she?”

  “Alli, man.”

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Um… Tavor or Tevor. Somethin’ fuckin’ European.”

  Baudin tapped his ash onto the table. “How you know her?”

  “We spent time together, fooled around some months.”

  “Then what?” Dixon said.

  “Then she took off, man. She wasn’t no good. I woulda married her if she’d’ve had me, but she ain’t like that. So what she do now? Rob some bitches? Sell coke? She loved the nose candy, man.”