Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For

by L. J. Sellers

  “Thanks. I’ll get out of here now.”

  Jackson headed for the highway and decided to let it go. Bodehammer was their best suspect, and the DNA linked all three crimes. Maybe he had developed an interest in guns while he was in jail. Criminals often called their time behind bars ‘school’ or ‘college.’ It was definitely a learning experience.

  Out of habit, Ryan drove to the top of Skinner’s Butte. It’s where he always went when his mind was troubled. Calling it a butte was a stretch. The hill was just a little chunk of land that pushed up in the middle of Eugene. Ryan loved looking out over the city, seeing Willamette Street stretched out in front of him for miles until it climbed Spencer’s Butte on the other end of town. Now that was a real butte. But you had to hike uphill for two miles to get there and Ryan rarely had that much time or energy.

  Would this be the last time he saw the lights of Eugene? The thought made him squirm. Ryan had never lived anywhere else. Except for a few trips to Portland and one visit to Disneyland when he was ten, he hadn’t traveled much either. Los Angeles was too big, too fast, and too crazy for him. Alaska was more his speed, but it would be harder to get there. Driving the whole way was out of the question. Gas was too expensive, and his old van might not make it through the Canadian mountains. He could drive until his money ran low or the van broke down, then hitchhike the rest of the way. Ryan was pleased with this idea. Coming to the butte always helped him think.

  Now, what to do with Jamie?

  Ryan wanted to take her with him, but he couldn’t see how to make it work. Especially once they started hitchhiking. It would be impossible to control the situation. Damn! Ryan slammed the heel of his hand against the dashboard. He had believed he would have more time to win her over. Seeing the cop watching his apartment had thrown everything out of whack. His impulse said, Run! Don’t look back. Ryan would kill himself before he’d let them lock him up for ten years. He couldn’t leave Jamie there in the house chained to the wall, either. He wasn’t that kind of person. If he let her go, though, she would send the cops after him with a full description. She would also be able to testify against him if they caught him. The other women hadn’t seen his face, so he was okay there. Could he make Jamie want him if he had just a little more time?

  Just kill her and get it over with.

  The voice surprised him. Could he do that? Jamie was so beautiful. Ryan closed his eyes and tried to make a decision.

  Chapter 29

  Ted Conner stared at the thick pile of paperwork in the green folder and braced himself for the search. Ryan Bodehammer’s father was in this mess somewhere. Not only his name, but his address as well. Instinct, memory—he wasn’t sure why he knew it was there—but it was and he would find it. Then he would find Ryan. If that bastard had so much as touched Jamie, he would kill him. Conner unlocked his bottom desk drawer and pulled out his county-issued Sig Sauer. He would kill Bodehammer either way, just to put an end to this thing.

  Case notes, intake forms, arrest reports, court records. Page by page, Conner scanned each document. Panic, adrenaline, and fear pushed him to hurry through the pages. Periodically, he would stop and go back, worried he had missed something in his rush. David Bodehammer’s name came up a few times, but there was no contact information with it. Conner was anxious to get to the court documents. He had a feeling it might be there.

  His cell phone rang and made him jump. He was the only person left in the building and the sudden intrusion in the stillness was startling. Conner looked at the screen, but it said ‘private’. He hated answering those calls because it was often a telemarketer. He picked up anyway. What if it was Jamie calling from a friend’s phone because her battery was dead?

  “Ted Conner here.”

  “It’s Paul Phillips. Returning your call. What’s up?”

  “Have you seen Jamie?” Conner wasn’t crazy about Paul, with his long hair and environmental bullshit, but he wasn’t a bad person.

  “Not today.”

  “She’s still staying with you, right?”

  “No. She said she was going home yesterday.” Paul’s voice took on an edge. “What’s going on? Is Jamie missing?”

  “Did she specifically say she was coming to our place?”

  “She had to go see that little girl in the CSA program first, but she took her clothes and said she was going back to your house after that.”

  Conner’s heart missed a beat. “We haven’t seen her. Would you call around to her other friends, then get back to me?” Conner hung up. He didn’t have time for niceties. Jamie was clearly missing. Knowing his timid daughter, Conner didn’t for a second delude himself into thinking she had gotten an impulse yesterday and gone off and done something unexpected without telling them. Not Jamie.

  Dread filled his bones and Conner fought the urge to bellow and curse. Was his beautiful little Jamie lying dead somewhere? Raped and bloodied and forever silent? Conner jumped to his feet, his breath coming in rapid bursts. He would kill the bastard. He would beat him senseless first, then cut off his cock and let him bleed to death. Conner hit the floor and did forty push-ups, muscles responding as they were trained to. The effort calmed him enough to sit down and continue his search of the paperwork. He willed himself to be cool and logical. First, find the address. Then go get Bodehammer. Twelve minutes later, he found an address where the court had mailed a bail refund to David Bodehammer. Conner was certain it was where Ryan had grown up, the home he had expected to inherit when his father died. If Ryan was not at his apartment, this is where he would be.

  Conner could make it to west Eugene in another twelve minutes. He placed his weapon in his briefcase and exited the building. Bodehammer’s death would save them all a lot of trouble.

  Chapter 30

  Jackson drove back up the interstate toward Eugene and tried to plan his next move. Without more information, he felt stumped. He called Evans, who answered immediately. “Jackson, give me two minutes and I’ll call you right back.” Her voice held an edge of excitement and Jackson picked up the vibe. He drummed the steering wheel while he waited for her to call. The only other vehicles on the road were a convoy of semis heading south. As they passed, a massive wind rocked his car. Jackson stopped drumming and held on.

  When Evans called back she said, “I just talked to one of Bodehammer’s coworkers, a guy named Mason. He says Bodehammer liked to drive up to Skinner’s Butte. He says Bodehammer camped out up there a few times last summer, even though it’s illegal.”

  “Good work, Evans. Are you headed to the butte now?”

  “I’m just getting into my car.” He heard the car door slam shut, then she continued, “I talked to several employees here at the Goodwill and no one else seemed to know much about Bodehammer, except that he’s a neat freak.”

  “Call in some help. Let’s get a dozen patrol cops up there searching. We’re looking for a dark blue cargo van, a campsite, and maybe a dead body.”

  “Are you headed to the butte?”

  “Unless I hear something better from one of the guys.”

  Next Jackson called Ted Conner, hoping to ask him if he’d heard from Jamie. Conner didn’t pick up. Jackson simply asked him to call back. No point in rubbing salt in the man’s wound by reminding him that his daughter was missing. His next call went to Quince. “What have you got for me?” Jackson skipped the pleasantries.

  “Not a damn thing. So far none of these photos match any missing women in the database.”

  “Did McCray make it back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Evans and I are headed up to Skinner’s Butte. A co-worker said Bodehammer likes it up there. Even camps out sometimes.”

  “Should I head up there too?”

  “How many pictures left to compare?”

  “Two.”

  “Stay with that for now. Evans is calling in patrol units to search the butte.”

  Jackson hung up and speed-dialed Schak. The line was busy, so he flipped the phone closed. He
had just passed the turnoff to Lane Community College and the first Eugene exit was next. As he rolled off the freeway and onto Franklin Boulevard, he tried Schak again. Still busy. Damn. He wanted to know what the situation was at the house on Pondview. Scott had seemed to think his brother would go there. If Ryan was still in town. It made sense to Jackson as well. He was tempted to cruise out to west Eugene first, but from downtown the butte was much closer. Jackson vacillated. Schak was competent and thorough and Jackson trusted him to do his job. He would hear from his partner any moment. Jackson made a right at Pearl Street and headed for the park entrance.

  Ryan gunned the van, flying down the curvy road in near blackness. He almost missed the hairpin turn and forced himself to slow down. Anxiety crawled through his veins like an army of angry ants. The orderly life he had constructed for himself—after his repulsive chaotic stint in jail—had crumbled and there was nothing left to salvage. A cop was sitting in front of his apartment so he couldn’t go home, and he’d missed two days of work without calling in so he couldn’t go back there either. Even his old family home wasn’t right anymore. Without Dad, it was just a crappy little house with no heat.

  Ryan thought about Jamie and let out a harsh laugh. The life he’d imagined with her was just a bullshit dream. Another one of his fantasies. His diseased mind was trying to create a reality that was better than his actual experience. He’d been to enough counselors to know the fancy terminology, but as Dad always said, he just wasn’t right in the head. Except right now, he was having a very lucid moment. Ryan hoped it would last long enough to see him through the unpleasant part of dealing with Jamie. He couldn’t let her beauty or her tears get in his way. She was the only one of the women who could identify him and that was too bad.

  As he neared the bottom of the hill, the city came into view again. Now he could see the side of the Hilton Hotel and the top of the 5th Street Public Market. The jail was nearby too, but Ryan didn’t look for it. He crossed Pearl and made a left on Cheshire Avenue, heading around the back of the butte and away from downtown. Going this way, he could stick to the back roads and side streets, keeping a low profile. If a cop was sitting in front of his apartment, they might be looking for this van too. His neighbors could describe the van if the cops talked to them.

  The ants in his veins made him so jumpy he had trouble keeping the van moving in a straight line. The last thing he needed was to get pulled over for suspicion of drunk driving. He kept coming back to the cop near the alley behind his apartment. Had his PO issued a warrant because he missed his last appointment? Or did they know about the dykes? Ryan suspected they knew about the rapes, but he didn’t know how they knew. He thought he’d been careful, covering their heads and using condoms.

  His shook his head to push the past away. He couldn’t think about his old life anymore. He had to take care of business and get out of town. In Alaska, he could start fresh. They wouldn’t even look for him there. He might even find a doctor and start taking his meds again. Maybe that had been his mistake. As much as he hated the fuzzy-head feeling, the meds kept his anger in check. Maybe in Alaska, it wouldn’t matter. He doubted there were many dykes in the last great frontier. Alaska wouldn’t be anything like Eugene. Here, you couldn’t go into a store without seeing a couple of lesbos.

  From Railroad Boulevard, he crossed over to the Northwest Expressway. Not a single car on the long straight road running parallel to the railroad. He pushed the van to sixty and thought about how he would silence Jamie. He hated the idea of bashing in her pretty head and leaving her ugly forever. She was so frail, he figured he could strangle her easily enough. He would have sex with her one more time first. The thought gave him a hard-on. Ryan shifted in the seat to get comfortable. He was almost there.

  Jamie carried the metal bar she’d taken from the closet and shuffled back to the bed, the chain clinking on the floor behind her. This bed was not like her bed at home with the thick comforter and ruffled skirt hiding the suitcases and other junk she kept under it. It was small and hard with only a single brown blanket. The box spring mattress showed and so did the space under the bed, but it wasn’t a big deep space. Jamie kneeled and pushed the bar under the bed on the side near the bathroom, leaving it about four inches from the edge.

  Getting up was a struggle with the chain around her waist. She walked over to the door and stood, looking back at the bed. She couldn’t see the bar. As she moved closer, the metal came into view. Of course, she was staring right at it. Ryan would have no reason to look down. Jamie kneeled and pushed the metal bar another two inches deeper under the box springs. She laid on her back near the edge to see if she could reach it. She couldn’t get to it without rolling to the side. Did that matter? Jamie kneeled on the floor again and pulled the bar back toward her an inch. That would have to be good enough.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, heart racing with anticipation even as she shivered from the cold. This experience was not something she was prepared for in any way. She had never played sports or engaged in any kind of roughhousing. Her father had tried to teach her self-defense when she was in high school, but she’d had no interest. She regretted all of that now. Why hadn’t she tried harder? Because Dad wanted so badly to toughen her up? Jamie would have cried with remorse, but she was all cried out.

  It was time to fight, even though she had no idea how. If she got lucky and struck a deadly blow and managed somehow to get free, she promised herself she would live her life differently in the future. She would finish college, become a social worker, and make Raina proud. She would join a gym, build some muscles, and make her father proud. She would stand, chin up, and not be afraid of everything.

  Jamie almost laughed at herself, but the sound stuck in her throat. She worried she didn’t have the strength to hit Ryan hard enough to knock him out. She was wimpy even on a good day, and today she was in pain all over and scared to death. What if she only knocked him out, what then? Keep whacking him on the head every time he moved? Could she do that? The thought made her a little queasy. She took five long slow breaths, willing herself to be calm. She needed the element of surprise. He could not suspect that anything had changed while he was gone. Jamie changed her mind about where to keep the metal bar.

  Suddenly, she had to pee. Jamie shuffled to the bathroom, relieved herself, then stared in the mirror. She had the same look her grandma had after surgery—pale, pained, and uncertain. Would this be the last time she saw her own face?

  Footsteps pounded across the back yard. He was coming.

  Chapter 31

  Jackson worried he would miss the turnoff leading up to the butte. He hadn’t been there since Katie was a little kid. The narrow road was right where his memory said it was. He made a quick left and was instantly transported from a midtown residential area to a rural single-lane road, climbing through a lush steep forest. Only the lights of the Shelton-McMurphy-Johnson House, glowing through the trees at the base of the butte, reminded him he was still in downtown Eugene. The three-story Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion had been built by a doctor in 1888 and was now a historic landmark, rented out for special occasions. Jackson was a little ashamed he had never been inside it.

  Tonight, he flew by the landmark, pushing his cruiser past a reasonable speed for the dark narrow road. In a moment, he noticed lights in his rearview mirror closing in rapidly behind him. When the car got within twenty yards, it suddenly slacked off. Jackson could see that it was a dark sedan like the one he was driving. Evans. He had somehow beaten her here.

  Jackson rounded the last corner. The road flattened out into a parking lot overlooking the city. No sightseers or romantically inclined couples were taking in the view on this cold night in February. No blue cargo van either. Not at this spot anyway. He remembered another road, leading to the other side of the butte. From there, the hill dropped down in a ninety-degree angle of sheer rock. Climbers used the rock cliff for practice.

  Jackson jumped out of his car just as Evans pulled up
next to him. A freezing wind blew across the top of the hill and made him realize he was not dressed for an extended outdoor search. Jackson looked out at the city below. Was Bodehammer still out there somewhere?

  “Looks pretty desolate up here,” Evans commented, flipping on a flashlight.

  “Did you call Lammers and ask for patrol officers?”

  “Yep. We should have ten or twelve officers here very soon. She even called out a canine unit.”

  Dread had filled his stomach as soon as Jackson saw the empty parking lot. The feeling wouldn’t shake loose. “We may find Jamie Conner’s body here, but I think Bodehammer is likely rolling down the road. His sister-in-law thinks he’ll head for Alaska.”

  “His vehicle and his picture are in the system. Someone will spot him.” Evans touched his arm. “Don’t worry, he’ll be in custody within a week or two.”

  “Unless he’s halfway across Canada by now. That’s a lot of territory for law enforcement to cover. A lot of acreage for a man to hide in.”