Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For

by L. J. Sellers

  Jamie!

  As Jamie struggled under Ryan’s weight, a voice boomed near the door. “Get off her or I’ll blow your head off.”

  Ryan froze. Jamie turned her head to see her father step into the small room. He held a gun aimed in their direction. Her father had come to save her!

  “Get off her!”

  “No! You’ll kill me the minute I’m clear.” Ryan shouted right next to her face.

  “I won’t. I just want you to get off my daughter and get out of this town for good.”

  Jamie felt the weight of Ryan’s body lighten. He had tensed and was ready to move. Please. Just get off and do what he says.

  Ryan straightened his arms and pushed himself up. He pulled his feet up to the bed and eased himself back. He kept one eye on her father at all times. Ryan stood and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Move over to the wall.” Her father’s voice sounded tight, as if the words were breaking off as he spoke them.

  “You said you’d let me go.”

  “I will. Just move away from Jamie.”

  Ryan hesitated, then took a step away from the bed, keeping his eye on the gun. Nothing happened, so he took another step. “Why don’t you put down the gun and let me get by?”

  Her father glanced over at her as Jamie sat up. “Jamie, sweetheart, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Was she really? Would she ever be okay after this? That depended on what she found out next. “Did you kill Raina?”

  Her dad looked startled. “No, honey. Of course not. This bastard did.”

  “Bullshit.” Ryan spit the word out. “You killed her and thought you would pin it on me. You sent the cops after me, didn’t you?”

  “Jamie, close your eyes and hold your hands over your ears.”

  Instinctively, she did as she was told.

  The blast of the gun was deafening and the room shook for a split second. Jamie wanted to keep her eyes closed, but they came open anyway. Ryan was on his back on the floor, blood pouring from his demolished forehead. Relief washed over her. The bastard would never hurt her again.

  “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

  The gun was at her dad’s side and his eyes pleaded with her to understand. Even though she now had a glimmer of what had happened to Raina, Jamie would never really understand. “You killed her, didn’t you? You found out she was gay and you killed her to keep her away from me. As though you could keep me from being gay.”

  “You’re not gay, Jamie. You never were. Now let’s go home.”

  Jamie looked up defiantly. “But I am gay. I am definitely a lesbian. Am I still welcome in your home?” She would never go there again, but she wanted to know how he would handle this.

  “Stop saying that. You’re not a lesbian!” His voice had an edge of panic she had never heard from her father before. “It was Raina and only Raina. She influenced you. She always did, even when you were in high school. Whatever Raina did, you followed. If she joined the choir, you joined the choir. Raina wanted to be a social worker, so you wanted to be a social worker. Raina went gay, so you thought you were gay too. You’re not, you’ll see. Just give it a chance.”

  Jamie was devastated. The unthinkable was true. Her father had killed her best friend to keep his daughter from being a lesbian. Just how homophobic was he? Rage built up in every nerve in her body. The bastard, how dare he? Jamie decided to punish him in the only way she knew how.

  “I am gay! I will always be gay.” She got up from the bed and lurched toward him, her voice becoming a shriek. “I am sexually attracted to women. I like looking at their naked bodies. I liked kissing Raina and feeling her breasts. In fact, I’m going to have sex with the first lesbian I run into when I get out of this hellhole. I’m going to put my face between her legs and—”

  “Shut up!” Suddenly, his gun was pointed at her chest.

  Jamie couldn’t stop. “I’m a dyke, a rug-muncher. I’m going to fall in love with another woman and have lesbian sex every day.”

  “Shut up!” The gun shook in his hand.

  “My lover and I will move to California and get married. I’ll get artificially inseminated and have your grandson. Then I’ll name the boy after you and raise him with my lesbian lover.”

  She’d gone too far. Jamie saw the flash in his eyes. This time, she didn’t have a chance to close her eyes and cover her ears.

  Chapter 33

  As Jackson drove, he had second thoughts about leaving Evans to handle the search at the butte. This trip to David Bodehammer’s house was probably a waste of time, but someone had to go inside. Even if Ryan wasn’t holed up in the house, Jackson might find something that would lead him to locate his suspect. He had nothing else to work with at this point.

  Evans would call immediately if they found Bodehammer, Jackson told himself. He could be back on the butte in ten minutes. He kept heading out 6th Avenue, hitting all the lights and making good time. His stomach hurt, so he checked his watch. It was after eight o’clock, and he hadn’t eaten since morning. It had been a long busy day of interrogations and subpoenas and searches. And driving back and forth. Jackson was ready to get out of his car. He desperately needed a long run and a dinner with Kera.

  As he turned left on Barger, his cell phone rang. “Jackson, it’s Jasmine Parker. I have some weird news.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Remember the bone that was in the dog’s mouth out at the Gormans’ trailer?” Excitement crept into Jasmine’s voice, despite her effort to keep it flat. “The missing persons database didn’t produce a hit, so I asked the lab to compare the DNA from the bone to Bruce Gorman’s DNA sample. Guess what? The bone belongs to Gorman’s child.”

  “So Gorman has a dead kid buried out there in the woods somewhere?”

  “It looks that way. We won’t be able to tell how the child died unless we can find the rest of the body.”

  Jackson’s mind raced. “What happened to the dog? We need to find it. Maybe it will lead us to the rest of the bones.”

  “I’ll call Lane County Animal Control in the morning. I hope it hasn’t been put down yet.”

  “Do me a favor please? Call Sergeant Lammers and tell her about the DNA match. Ask her to call the captain at the jail. I want to make sure Gorman is not matrixed out again.” Jackson was relieved to know his pursuit of Gorman as a suspect had not been a misguided waste of time. His instincts about the ex-con had been right.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” Parker said. “The tire treads we found at Gorman’s place had a flaw that showed up under close scrutiny. It turns out that flaw is only present in tires that were originally mounted on 2004 Dodge Rams.”

  “Thanks, Jasmine, for working late and keeping me posted.”

  Jackson stopped at the red light in front of the shopping area on the corner of Barger and Beltline. He glanced over at the McDonald’s parking lot and spotted a Dodge Ram. Those trucks were everywhere. Even narrowing it down to the year 2004 wouldn’t help his investigation much. A scene from earlier flashed in his mind. Ted Conner standing in the parking lot of the parole and probation office next to his late-model Dodge Ram. The truck was popular with law enforcement personnel too.

  The light turned green and Jackson pressed the accelerator. He was only a mile from Bodehammer’s house now. Jackson couldn’t stop thinking about Ted Conner. He remembered Conner had referred to lesbians as lesbos. A lot of people did, Jackson thought. Conner also knew both Raina and Jamie. What had Evans said? I think Jamie is afraid her parents will find out she’s gay.

  Jackson shook his head, disturbed by this line of thinking. Yet the first rule in law enforcement said there was no such thing as coincidence. The poet-stepmother-Bodehammer connection was solid for the attacks on Keesha Williams and Amy Hastings. Could Raina’s murder be a crime separate from the rapes? Committed by someone other than Bodehammer? What about the DNA match? The hair found on Raina’s body matched Bodehammer’s semen.

  Temples pounding, Jackson t
urned right on Dakota, slowing down a bit for the residential area. The online map he’d looked at earlier indicated Pondview was toward the end, not far from the Golden Garden ponds. Jackson kept coming back to Ted Conner. He was Bodehammer’s parole officer. Ryan Bodehammer sat in Ted Conner’s office once or twice a month. How hard would it be to collect a piece of DNA from him? Was Conner capable of murder? And why? Was he enough of a bigot to murder a young woman because she was gay and in love with his daughter? The thought was ludicrous. Jackson tried to push it away. He had to focus on finding Bodehammer. The rapist was a threat to other young women even if he hadn’t killed Raina. Jackson had to search the house on Pondview with a clear head.

  Near the end of Dakota, Jackson turned on Pondview, a short dead-end street. Another image flashed in his mind. A small black button tucked into an evidence box, along with an assortment of pennies and pens and trash. A button that could have fallen off the well-worn black suit jacket he’d seen Conner wearing this morning. Jackson tried to visualize the jacket to see what he remembered, but he was suddenly distracted by the sight of Conner’s truck parked on the gravel driveway in front of him.

  What the hell?

  Jackson pulled in behind the truck, ensuring Conner couldn’t drive away without permission. What was the PO doing here? Looking for Bodehammer?

  As Jackson opened his car door, a shot rang out from inside the house. Holy shit! His instinct was to run toward the house. Training overrode impulse and he called dispatch.

  “Shots fired. 1307 Pondview Street, off Dakota. Send back up.”

  Weapon drawn and ready, Jackson moved quickly to the front door. His heart pounded with the expectation that someone might come running from the house with a weapon—and he would have to shoot. He had not fired his weapon in the line of duty in many years. The front door was semi-closed but not latched. Someone had ripped part of the framing out to pry it open. Jackson listened for running sounds, but heard only muffled yelling in the back of the house. He kicked the door open with his foot, while keeping his weapon ready to fire.

  A short hallway opened to a small living room on the right and to a perpendicular hallway at the end. Jackson moved cautiously toward the loud voices, his weapon held out in front of his body. He rounded the corner to the left, braced for an encounter. The hallway was empty, except for a long metal bar on the floor in front of an open door. The shouting came from inside a bedroom.

  Three long strides and he reached the doorway. Jackson stood back, not exposing himself yet. He wished at that moment that Schak was with him, providing him cover. Now he could tell the voice was female, loud, and nearly hysterical. A man’s voice yelled, “Shut up!”

  The young woman kept yelling. She was shouting something about getting married and having a grandson. Then there was silence. Jackson made his move. He lunged through the door, weapon outstretched, finger steady on the trigger. In a split second, he processed the scene: A large man with a gun pointed at a young blond woman near the bed and someone bleeding on the floor. Jackson aimed his weapon at the man, who he assumed was Ted Conner, even though he couldn’t see his face from this angle.

  “Drop your weapon!”

  His command was drowned out by the blast of the other gun. Jackson pulled his own trigger just as Conner spun to face him. His bullet struck Conner in the chest, knocking him back. As the big man went down, Jackson was hit with the realization that he had just shot and likely killed a law enforcement officer. What the hell just happened here? He moved quickly across the room, knelt down on the floor, and pulled the Sig Sauer from Conner’s hand. He tucked the weapon into the back of his jeans, making as little contact with the evidence as possible. He rushed to the young woman who had fallen to the bed, legs dangling on the floor. She was gushing blood from a hole just above her heart. Jackson checked her hands. Empty. She held no weapon.

  Her chest heaved as she tried to speak. Jackson pulled off his jacket and pressed the cloth against her wound. With the other hand he dialed 911. “This is Detective Jackson. I have a gun-shot victim with extensive bleeding at 1307 Pondview. It’s a dead end off Dakota. I’ve already called for more officers.” He clicked the phone shut and glanced back at Conner, but didn’t see any movement in his chest. He turned back to the woman, wondering what else he could do to help her. Her face had lost all its color, and she was no longer trying to speak. He recognized her from Bodehammer’s stack of photos. Jamie Conner. Jesus Christ. Ted Conner had just shot his own daughter.

  Jackson’s brain scrambled to make sense of it. Just how angry did you have to be about gays to kill two innocent young women? Who was on the floor? Ryan Bodehammer? Jackson glanced over, but couldn’t see the man’s face from his position on the bed. The body type and blond hair fit Bodehammer’s description. Jackson pressed a little harder against Jamie’s wound. He had to keep her alive. Until this moment, as a public safety officer, he had failed her completely.

  When the first two patrol officers arrived at the scene, Jackson had no explanation, only brief directions. “One of you go back outside and keep any civilians or reporters from getting in here. The other can feel the pulse of the guys on the floor. I think they’re both dead but check anyway.”

  Meanwhile Jackson kept talking to Jamie, telling her to hold on. The bullet had missed her heart. If she had the will to live, she could make it. From the looks of the chain she had been tethered with and the bruises everywhere, Jamie had already survived quite an ordeal in this room. Jackson willed the young woman to keep fighting for her life long enough to make it to the hospital.

  “This guy’s got a pulse.” The officer was kneeling next to Conner and looking around for something to stem the bleeding. Jackson remembered the officer’s name was Jake Walters.

  “I think that’s a bathroom.” Jackson pointed at the little door near the corner. “Look for a towel.”

  “I know this guy. I think he’s a PO,” Walters said.

  “He is.”

  “You shot a PO?”

  “Go find a towel!”

  Walters trotted to the bathroom and came back with a hand towel to press against Conner’s chest. Jackson asked, “Did you check the other guy?”

  “He’s toast.”

  Jackson ignored the cavalier comment.

  “So what happened here?”

  “A father with a love-hate relationship with his daughter.” Jackson looked over at Bodehammer. “And a rapist who picked the wrong victim.”

  The sound of the ambulance siren drew closer and finally came to a stop in front of the house.

  Jackson grudgingly released his pressure on Jamie’s wound and stepped back to let the paramedics take over. He said a quick prayer for Jamie as he watched them carry her out of the house. He wanted to go with her, to hear her story the moment she was able to tell it. That would have to wait. He had a crime scene to process. He had already called Evans, who had notified the team. The medical examiner was en route as well. There was no mystery here about who or how or time of death. All that remained to clarify was, Why?

  Even though he had a working theory, he would never fully understand the underlying motive. Jackson could not imagine shooting his own daughter under any circumstances. It was unthinkable. Even if Katie became a porn star, or a heroin addict, or a serial killer, he would still love the person she had once been. Jackson didn’t think he could shoot his daughter even in the line of duty to save someone else.

  Schak burst into the room just as the paramedics were taking Conner out. Schak looked at the body on the floor and held his head in distress. “I can’t believe I walked away from this house without a thorough check. I took a personal phone call and let it distract me. I am so sorry.”

  Jackson had never seen his partner and friend so upset. “Let it go. We all make mistakes. This case was a mess from the beginning. I focused on the wrong suspect for days.”

  “What the hell happened? I recognize Bodehammer from his mug shot, but who’s the guy on the stretcher?” />
  “Ted Conner. He’s Bodehammer’s PO and Jamie’s father. I think he came here looking for Jamie and shot Bodehammer for hurting her. I don’t know why he shot his daughter, but I think he killed her friend, Raina, and tried to pin it on Bodehammer.”

  Stunned, Schak said, “He shot his daughter? Jamie was here?”

  Jackson pointed at the chain connected to the wall. “I think she’s been captive here since yesterday. Bodehammer must have kidnapped her. Conner must have found the address and came here looking for her.”