The Book of Judges

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  When I got to my office I spent half a minute petting Rhoda, trying to get my mind back on the case. I forced myself to google all the committee members, just to see who they were when they weren't on the committee. I fell asleep at my desk.

  My phone chirped and woke me up at midnight. A text from Rick.

  Please talk to me.

  No.

  Thank you!

  Dang it. I shouldn’t have responded. I knew better than to play his games.

  Babe, talk to me. I failed. We failed. We can fix this.

  No.

  He was an idiot. We failed? I wasn’t the one with a hot piece in my bed while he was away.

  I’m calling.

  I turned off my phone. Let him call Izzy if he wanted to talk so badly.

  Since I was awake again, I stared at my computer screen. The last person I had searched was Rafe Winter. His church was weird. But was it harmless weird or murderous-weird? The website read like your standard new age mumbo jumbo. All paths lead to the same place, etc. Rafe was their prophet of peace, but not their founder. Someone called Ergo German had founded the church in the 90s. I rolled my neck to pop it. Cult leaders had a way of killing, either on purpose like the famous cases of group suicide or by flawed religious practices like dangerously prolonged fasting. Or by beating their kids to death. That kind of stuff. If Adam Demarcus hadn’t been killed for giving drugs to homeless people or hanging out with Muslims it could easily be that Rafe Winter was a wolf in prophet of peace clothing.

  Chapter Four

  Rafe Winter’s abnormal reactions in the meeting stuck with me all the next day. After first rejecting him entirely as too mellow to be a killer, I realized he could easily be playing a game.

  It was obvious that I had to go to his church, first.

  The Universal Temple met in an old barn with a large stained-glass window in place of the hayloft door. The interior had been whitewashed and was light and bright. The weak fall sun cast a rainbow glow as it shone through the glass image of what looked like the long slender female Buddha, though I wasn’t an expert on the various Buddhas.

  “Rafe is in his office.” The adorable little secretary placed her thin hand on my elbow. “Let me show you the way.” Her voice cracked sweetly as only a very elderly lady’s voice can crack.

  “Thanks.” The barn was equipped with the old pews other churches had been shedding for the last decade, upholstered in the colors of the ages. Orange, red, blue, green, teal, and too many shades of brown to name. Banners that hung from the ceiling must have come from the same church tag sales. They registered praise for everything from the Krishna to St. Christopher. The back wall was adorned with a rescued billboard I remembered from about ten years ago: Si, se puedo! Yes, I can! The community college shout out to students from Hispanic families.

  Rafe sure wanted his church to know they could do it, but what was it they wanted to do?

  Rafe’s office was under the hay loft.

  He stood from his rocking chair and greeted me with a solemn handshake. “Welcome.” He smiled like he had been getting high. Not that it took a detective to recognize the distinctly skunky aroma of pot that filled his office. He laid a weed-cigarette on the arm of his rocker with care. It didn’t roll off.

  “Are you here for wisdom?” He gestured to a bean bag on the floor and moved to one as well.

  I sat, my knees almost to my chin. Bean bags were not made for tall girls.

  The sweet little grandmother took the rocking chair and the cigarette. She inhaled deeply and smiled.

  “Rafe, you shouldn’t smoke so much. Smoking will give you cancer, son.” She took another long drag. “I know I should quit, too, but you are supposed to be my spiritual mentor.” She had an ecstatic look on her face, her eyes closed and smiling, almost giggling.

  “Oh Nonie,” Rafe said. “You just make me smile every day.” He stretched out his bare foot and rocked her chair with it.

  She kept grinning like a little elf woman.

  “Rafe, I want to talk about Adam Demarcus. You said he came here once or twice.” I couldn’t handle my scrunched position anymore, so I stretched my legs also. They ended up under Nonie’s rocking chair, but she didn’t notice. She just kept smoking.

  “Sure, sure. I knew him. Adam was a good guy. I knew him. I liked him. You could say I loved the idea of him, even. Nonie, we all loved Adam, right?”

  “Adam was a seeker,” Nonie said, eyes still closed. “He wanted to learn and to know, but he didn’t know yet.” She sighed heavily. “Poor, poor Adam.”

  “No, not poor Adam,” Rafe said. “A seeker never loses. A learner never dies.” Rafe stared out the window, not looking at me, not looking at Nonie, probably lost somewhere over the rainbow.

  “What was Adam seeking?” I kept my voice cool, and mellow.

  “The light. Maura. He was seeking the light, he just didn’t know it yet.”

  Nonie began to giggle and couldn’t stop.

  “Laugh, little Mama. Laugh away.” Rafe reclined into his beanbag chair, arms flung to the side.

  This interview was going to take extra work on my part.

  While they sat smoking, and enjoying the smoke-filled room, I tried to plan my next move. It was quiet for a long time, and the silence took on an ominous feeling.

  Nonie opened her eyes and leaned forward, looking surprisingly sober. “The trouble with Adam was his loyalties were divided. We can’t serve two masters.”

  “Oh, dear little mama. Your traditional waspish upbringing is coming out again.” Rafe sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees. He gazed at Nonie like she was his child. “There are no masters. I wish that I could convince all of you. You are your only master. Adam served himself and that’s the goal for all of us here. I hate the idea that anyone would serve anyone but themselves. Why would they? How could they?” He stopped, turned to me and stared. “Don’t be a slave, Maura. You have been serving the enemy, you know how I know?”

  Nonie nodded, eyes again closed, cigarette pinched in her thin, pale fingers. This must have been the kind of thing he said a lot, so she knew what was coming.

  I cleared my throat.

  “I know you’ve been serving the wrong master because you don’t believe.”

  I checked my watch. This had gone on long enough. I stood up. “Thanks for your time, Rafe, it’s been interesting.”

  “No, sit.” Rafe said. “Please let me talk to you. Let me help you. Let me free you from your slavery to Rick’s traditions.” He stood up and held his hands to me. “Rick doesn’t believe, either.”

  “Tell me something new,” I said, mostly to myself. Rick doesn’t believe anything but that he’s the best.

  “Dear Maura, serving Rick all these years. Serving his mission when you are so amazing and should only serve yourself. It’s only in serving ourselves that we are made free to create new and better worlds.”

  Of the few things I hated, listening to gibberish was the second worst. “Okay Rafe, thank you. If you think of anything Adam did while he was here, could you let me know?”

  Rafe sat back down and closed his eyes, hands templed before his face.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Nonie said.

  I let her.

  I paused on the steps to the barnlike church and thought about wasted time in general. Wasting my time and investigation talking to people who were high. Wasting my time married to a cheating narcissist. My thoughts compulsively spun back to Rick, his infidelity, my disgust, anger, plans for revenge.

  I had no plans for revenge.

  I’d have to fix that.

  * * *

  After three days of sponge baths in my office bathroom I felt as dirty as I smelled. I was a hot mess of pent-up energy and anxiety. In general, I tried not to take murder and abuse cases. If I wanted to get involved in the more dangerous side of crime I could’ve been a cop like my grandpa.

  I headed to my twenty-four-hour gym while it was still dark out. Grandpa hadn’t been impressed
with my choice to be a PI, but I liked snooping around and I liked to dig up dirt. I liked discovering people’s secrets. I had even liked catching cheating spouses—just not mine.

  I skipped the weight machines and the fitness class and went straight to the bikes. I set my course for mountains and peddled until I couldn’t breathe. Sweat dripped off my forehead, down my bra, and anger seeped out of my pores. Maybe I could get the whole thing out of my system this way. There were moments in the last three days when I hadn’t been sure what was worse: focusing on the mutilated body or my mutilated marriage.

  Right now, I chose the body. The chopped off toes bothered me more than the hands. I could see chopping off the thumbs. Symbolically ending of man’s productivity. There was something about it that struck me as vengeful and logical. Steal from me; chop off your hand. Embezzle; chop off your thumb. We do evil with our hands.

  But what about the big toes? Was it a mobility thing? Even if he’d gone somewhere he shouldn’t have, the problem would have been with what he had seen or heard, right? And if he had seen something or heard something that he shouldn’t have, wouldn’t it make more sense to dig his eyes out or slice off his ears? If it had been some kind of sex crime, they would have chopped something else off, not his toes.

  I stopped my mad cycling, wiped down my bike, and hit the shower. If this was my best chance to keep clean while saving up for a lawyer I would be in great shape by the time I was divorced.

  It gave me a jolt of vindictive pleasure to report that Linda’s dream of my keeping Adam Demarcus’s name out of the media was hopeless. My Google Alerts were working overtime, and in my favor. Not that Demarcus was getting negative press. So far, the media loved him as much as everyone else did, but this morning I had a Google alert that included “Corbett”, “murder”, and “tractor”, which was the lead I had been waiting days for.

  I had to follow a trail that started at Reddit, but I eventually made my way to the Facebook account of a teenager using the pseudonym “John Deere”. His account was only two days old and consisted of pictures of his tractor and bad haikus about being a murder witness. While it wasn’t a lot to go on, it might prove a tractor did make a midnight drive, as Lars had claimed, and that the tractor driver had seen something worthwhile.

  The Facebook account and haiku business seemed to be a grab for internet fame, but John Deere only had sixty-five friends, so the scheme didn’t seem to be working out.

  Forty of John Deere’s friends were students at Corbett High School. Five of them shared the same last name—Stimpson. These Stimpsons lived all over the country with only six in Corbett. They were also various ages, so I surmised they were John Deere’s family. Two of the Corbett Stimpsons were also teenagers—so possibly John Deere’s siblings—or John Deere’s real identity and siblings. It was a great starting point. I couldn’t call the school to ask them for information; FERPA laws prevented that. But I could use the White Pages. Before I closed Facebook, I sent John Deere a friend request and jotted down all the names on his list. I also took note of one particularly sorry Haiku:

  * * *

  John Deere Rolls onward

  Past the flashing lights of death

  Past the bright murder.

  * * *

  The poet had included the clue about the tractor which hadn’t been reported in the news, a sign this was legit. Which meant the flashing lights of death were probably legit, too. But what were they? If this was literal it explained how our poet had noticed activity at Crown Point that night, but why would a murderer take a risk like that? Finding this poet jumped to the front of my to do list.

  The online White Pages pulled up two Stimpson families in Corbett. One listing for Donald and Esther, the other Troy and Jennifer. I took a stab in the dark that Troy and Jennifer had teenage kids, and Donald and Esther were the grandparents.

  Jennifer answered my call on the first ring. “My name is Maura Garrison.” I introduced myself. “Am I speaking to Jennifer Stimpson?”

  “Sure, what can I do for you?”

  “This is a little awkward, I’m sure, but I’m a private investigator looking into the recent murder in Corbett.”

  “Oh, that was just awful.” She sounded chatty which was always good. I liked a person who liked to gossip about the news.

  “I have reason to believe there was an innocent witness to the murder—the witness might not have seen much of anything, but I’d love to talk to the person.”

  “I bet you would, but what does that have to do with me?”

  “Well…” This was the risky bit; the one thing guaranteed to shut someone up was implying her son might have something to do with a murder. “Just to start, to see if I am even on the right track, do you all have a tractor?”

  “Nope, I’m sorry.” She sounded relieved. I wasn’t.

  “What about your neighbors? Is there a tractor nearby?”

  She laughed, a little nervously. I’d have to move slowly and carefully with her from here on out.

  “My in-laws have one. They live next door. Technically our house is on their property, kind of, but the barn where they keep the tractor isn’t anywhere near my place. But I can’t see what their tractor has to do with a murder.” She was starting to ramble. Her defenses were definitely up.

  “It’s nothing really, well, just a small thing in fact, but a tractor was heard that night, driving past or, near to, Crown Point, and I have come across something that indicates the person on the tractor saw something weird that night. That’s all. Just saw something. Not a part of it at all, but I’d love to know what they saw.”

  “There are a lot of tractors in Oregon.” Jennifer’s voice was firm. “I don’t think this has anything to do with us.”

  Asking about her in-laws’ tractor had been enough to throw her defenses up. There was no point in mentioning her kid now. “Do you think your father-in-law would talk to me? He might know if any of his buddies had a tractor out that night, or…if any of his buddies’ kids or grandkids decided to have a joy ride.”

  Silence from Jennifer. I had hit a sore spot, possibly. “You know…” She hesitated. “I hate to say it, but my stepdaughter and her boyfriend sometimes do that.”

  Stepdaughter and her boyfriend! I was a lucky detective. Sometimes, just sometimes, women were willing to throw their step-kids under the bus.

  “Really? Do you think I could talk to her? Or maybe to her boyfriend? If the kids are doing this these days, they might know who was out that night. Like I said, there’s strong evidence that someone was out on a tractor and saw something that could be useful. If there’s any way that person could help us catch a dangerous criminal, it would be invaluable. They’d be a hero, really.” I laid it on thick.

  “Leave me your name and number and I’ll see if Gina wants to call you.”

  Gina Stimpson. She was on my list of John Deere’s followers. She had access to the tractor. My money was on her as the author of the bad haikus.

  “Let her know that I’m a private detective and that this is strictly between us. I just want a description of whatever might have been seen.”

  “I’ll have a word with her. If one of her friends knows something they really should talk to the police.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  We ended the call, me pleased, and her, I wasn’t sure. She had certainly wanted to protect her in-laws more than her step-daughter. But so long as she gave my name and number to Gina I didn’t care what her motive was. I just wanted to know what Gina had seen, and what on earth she meant by “flashing lights of death.”

  I went back to Facebook and checked out Gina Stimpson’s personal account. She was a little thing—a cheerleader who wore too much eyeliner. It didn’t look like she could have overpowered an adult male, then mutilated and killed him. There was a guy in several of the pictures with her, usually with a beefy, protective arm around her shoulder. From the photos I learned he was a football player, a farmer, and a hunter. He was big, to say the
least, and there was a glint in his eye, in the pictures, that seemed to say he had already seen things in life. None of that meant he was a lunatic murderer, though. It just meant he was technically big enough to have done the deed as opposed to his girlfriend who was much too small.

  Chapter Five

  “I smell a cat.” Everly Brown stood at the threshold of the super’s office. She sniffed again. She had come to do an inspection of her building. I suspect to see what fixtures she could rip out and sell before the buyer demolished it. I had been trying to pass, unnoticed. I had a full day of interviews ahead of me and didn’t have time to get kicked out just now.

  “Oh?” I shifted away from my landlord. “I do have a cat at home.”

  She looked me up and down. For the first time in my life I prayed that Rhoda’s black cat hairs were all over my clothes.

  She sucked in a breath. “No, it’s here. Someone has a cat in this building.” She scrunched her face up, irritated. “I guess because this place will be torn down the rules don’t matter anymore.”

  “Well, in a way, they shouldn’t. What would the point be? Smoking can’t ruin carpet and walls that are going into the landfill.” I attempted a casual laugh.

  “Have people been smoking?”

  “I don’t know. It was just an example. A cat can’t ruin the carpet if you are demoing the building, right?”

  She swung her bag to the other arm, with a dramatic swish. “I have signed contracts. No pets in this building.”

  “Of course. I’ll, um, let you know if I hear anything.”

  She curled her lip in disgust. “Do that.”

  She clicked down the hall, her high-heeled shoes a metronome telling the rest of us we weren’t keeping up.