Lot’s return to Sodom

by Sandra Brannan

  “For someone who said he only vaguely recalls Michelle’s name, you sure know the dates pertaining to her pretty darn well,” Streeter said, spinning the can of Diet Coke slowly between the tips of his fingers. He decided to clamp the screws a little tighter on Eddie Schilling. “You know the year she graduated, the exact year the volleyball program started—”

  “Now wait here a minute, Streeter,” Schilling said, a bit more nervous than before.

  With a sigh, Samantha pulled up a chair beside her husband and gripped his thigh, stating calmly, “Michelle Freeburg’s history and bios have been plastered all over the newspaper today. She’s a common household topic. It’s all we’ve talked about since they found the body yesterday. It’s all anyone has talked about.”

  “We?” Streeter asked.

  “The locals.” Schilling supported Samantha, more relaxed than with the prior question. “Rapid City, Nemo, Sturgis, all over the Hills. Everyone has a theory on how the poor girl got to that creek bank.”

  “And what’s your theory?”

  Schilling’s eyes looked away from Streeter for a second. Then he returned his stare, eyes boring directly into Streeter’s, the smile appearing once again on his tanned, good-looking face. Samantha’s gaze drifted toward the open door, in the general direction of the passing cars on the highway.

  “You really want to know my theory?”

  Streeter nodded slowly, not releasing Schilling from his icy stare.

  Schilling rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if this kind of pontificating required such concentration. “I think I know who killed that girl, but I don’t have any proof. I also think that if I breathe a word of it to you two fellows, I’d be the next body you’d find at the bottom of that creek.”

  Streeter asked, “Who?”

  Schilling exchanged a glance with his wife then mouthed the word. “Mully.”

  Streeter calmly asked in a normal voice, “And what would make you think Mully killed Michelle Freeburg?”

  Schilling’s eyes sprang open, wide with surprise. His eyes darted around the room like a wild pinball, seeking the ears he must have thought the walls had. “I didn’t say that,” he said hurriedly, adjusting his shorts. He reached for some paper and wrote, “This place could be bugged.”

  “Relax,” Streeter said, conjuring up his biggest lie yet. “This place isn’t bugged. Agent Blysdorf over there has a mechanical apparatus to detect listening devices. You’re safe. Nothing, right, Agent Blysdorf?”

  Bly looked over his shoulder at Schilling, patted his pants pocket, and flashed an affirming smile.

  Schilling closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh of relief, wiping the sweat from his brow as he did. His hands were like paws on a big grizzly bear, oversized compared to every other feature of his body. Perfect for playing sports like football and volleyball, Streeter thought.

  Samantha seemed disinterested in the entire topic, to judge by the slouched position she’d settled into.

  Schilling leaned closer and whispered, “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I never said anything about Mully and that girl. Nothing. You understand? Shank told me not to worry. That you would put these guys behind bars. Leonard told me to keep quiet and you guys would get this all taken care of. That’s the only reason I ratted Mully out, told Leonard that Mully wasn’t wearing his pin anymore and that now he was wearing purple wings. Purple wings. You know what that means?”

  Before Streeter could answer Schilling plunged ahead. “I’d love to help you guys out on this, but you have to figure this one out on your own. Mully and his guys might be back any minute, and I don’t need them hearing any rumors that aren’t true, like the FBI were here and I fingered the bastard. He’ll kill me.”

  “You mean that?” Streeter said, leaning toward his nervous host.

  Samantha interjected blandly, her pink lips moving imperceptibly with every word. “Eddie gets a little melodramatic sometimes.”

  Her husband leaned back and took a long drink of his pop. “It’s a figure of speech; didn’t mean anything by it. But you understand why this is so important, don’t you?”

  The only thing Streeter understood was that everyone was trying really hard to give the impression they never suspected Mully of hurting anybody, while pointing every finger and toe in his direction on the sly.

  “And Shank and Leonard told you to keep quiet, did they?” Streeter asked.

  “Well, yeah. They said you’d take care of all this for me.” His searching eyes volleyed from Streeter to Bly. “You will, won’t you?”

  Streeter said reassuringly, “Don’t you worry about a thing. As long as you tell us what you know, we’ll take care of the rest. Does either of you remember seeing or hearing anything unusual Sunday night or Monday morning while the Lucifer’s Lot bikers were camping here?”

  Schilling shrugged and grinned stupidly. Samantha grimaced as she turned away from him toward Streeter and said, “Everything these people do seems strange. They are not the cream of the societal crop, if you understand what I mean.”

  Streeter nodded.

  “Eddie worked up here on Sunday from around three in the afternoon until Monday around two or two thirty when I came up. Wouldn’t you say, dear?”

  “Yep,” he admitted.

  Streeter asked Schilling, “So you were up here all night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Streeter didn’t think his answer was as convincing as the first affirmation. “Alone?”

  Schilling licked his lips as he glanced at his wife.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said. “I was at home all night, doing laundry.”

  Samantha stood up and tilted her head slightly, saying to Streeter, “You asked if anything unusual happened. Last night one of the prospects—a prospective member of the club—was being teased by another member about ‘licking a stiff.’ I didn’t really understand what they had meant, but they completely stopped their conversations when they noticed me returning from one of my walks.”

  Schilling was staring up at her with his mouth stupidly agape. She reached over and, without reservation, pushed his chin up with the tip of her index finger, closing it.

  Samantha explained. “That’s not very intelligent looking, dear.”

  “You never told me that before,” Schilling said, surprised by the information.

  “You never asked,” she answered simply. “Besides, you didn’t get here last night until after ten thirty. And they left hours before that. But quite frankly, those loathsome creatures say all sorts of things that don’t bear repeating. I didn’t think about their comment regarding ‘a stiff’ until this morning, during my walk, when I put it in the context of the conversation we had with Sheriff Leonard and Bob Shankley yesterday afternoon. And once I had read the paper about the details of Michelle’s body being found, I thought it might be of importance.”

  “And you think they were referring to the prospect having oral sex with Michelle’s dead body?” Streeter asked.

  “Who knows what they were referring to? I was just repeating what I heard as I walked by their campsite.” Her wary eyes landed on Streeter’s.

  Thinking of Shank’s call when they were pulling out of the Nemo quarry, telling them about how the crime scene technicians found a set of boot prints headed back in this direction, Streeter turned to Schilling and asked, “Are you also a hiker, Eddie? Is that how you stay in such good shape?”

  Schilling shook his head and grinned. “No, lots of free weights and playing volleyball with my girls. That’s my secret.”

  Samantha looked impatiently at her watch. “I’ve got to go grocery shopping before it gets too late. Good-bye, dear.” She bussed Schilling’s cheek and turned toward the door.

  “Can we talk again, Mrs. Schilling?” Streeter asked, rising from the table as she made to leave.

  “Any time, Agent Pierce,” she said, her smile softening for the first time. “Am I on your list of suspects, too?”

  Streeter could see in that sm
ile how lovely she once was, could have been, if not for the bitterness. He speculated it was because she had married Peter Pan. Returning the smile, Streeter said, “Just gathering the facts.”

  She chortled. “You sound like Sergeant Joe Friday.”

  Streeter had no idea what she was talking about, but he liked how amusement made her less tense. “Who?”

  This made Bly snicker, and Streeter wondered what inside joke the two were sharing.

  Schilling smiled awkwardly. “I can talk with you again, too, of course. But once Mully returns, I’d prefer we meet somewhere else or while he’s up at Sturgis doing his business. Okay? I’ll help you as much as I can, but I don’t want to die.”

  I REMEMBERED WHEN BARKER’S Market used to be a Piggly Wiggly. It must have been quite a feat for Mom to keep all nine of us little ones in line while grocery shopping to feed her army. I recalled the fun we had piled high in and dancing around that cart. And that Mom was always one hell of a cook.

  I could feel the heat rising from the asphalt as I walked through the parking lot toward the grocery store. It brought to mind the image of the girl in the red bikini at Sturgis, and I thought how hot she must have been lying on the asphalt. I made a mental note to call the Sturgis hospital to see how she was doing, refusing to believe Creed’s prognosis.

  I made my way through the automated doors and approached the closest checkout clerk.

  “Do you know where I can find Roy Barker?”

  The clerk pointed up to the mirrored windows of the small, elevated room perched on the left overlooking the store. I pushed through the swinging door by the public restrooms near the front of the store and made my way up the narrow staircase where a sign with an arrow marked “Manager” pointing to a single door on my right.

  A man with dirty blond hair was sitting with his back to me at a desk pushed against the opposite, northeast corner of the windowed manager’s loft, tallying up numbers on a large tabletop calculator. I could see the logic in this layout, an ability for whoever was supervising to work the paper side of the business while having the ability to simply lift the eyes and view the entire grocery store below out the mirrored window, looking right, toward the checkout lanes or to the left, into the produce section and to the back of the store farther back.

  “Roy Barker?” I called through the open door.

  “Uh-huh,” the man hunched over the desk grunted as he wildly punched the keypad. “Give me a sec.”

  I did, taking the opportunity to snoop around the office. I read the plaques on the walls to the right of the door and studied the collage of photos that were on an organization chart on the other side, the manager, Roy Barker, perched at the top.

  The young man who swung around in his desk chair to greet me was definitely the same man in the picture below Roy Barker’s stenciled name. I could detect under his thin white polyester shirt wide, bony shoulders and a long, lean body, layered in sinewy muscles. His face had angular features, his skin had an orangey hue that could only have come from a bottle of Mystic Tan, and his eyes had the benefit of the expensive designer glasses that were perched on the bridge of his narrow nose. He didn’t look much older than a senior in high school.

  Roy extended his hand and I shook it, feeling as if the bones in his frail hand—incongruously weak compared to the rest of his buffed body—would break. “I’m Roy. How can I help you?”

  “I’m here to ask some questions about Michelle Freeburg,” I said, not really wanting to tell him I was Jens Bergen’s sister. “Do you have a minute?”

  “The FBI agents just left. Who are you?”

  I didn’t want to lie to Roy, but here he’d gone and offered me the perfect opportunity to do so. “I’m Agent Genevieve.” I’d always heard that sticking as close to the truth as possible makes the lie more believable. And since Genevieve was my baptismal name—not Liv, which is technically my middle name—and I was acting as an agent for Jens, I figured I was kinda telling the truth. Okay, I’d say my ten Hail Marys later. Maybe even call Catherine and ask her to say a few for my sorry soul in her official capacity.

  “Agent Stewart Blysdorf asked me to conduct a follow-up interview with you, if you have a minute.” I used his name because he seemed to be the common denominator among all of the FBI’s interviews so far.

  “Look, I’m already way behind because of their visit. I can’t imagine what I can tell you that I haven’t already told them. Is this absolutely necessary?”

  His annoyance with them was genuine. The irritation showing on his narrow face was mirrored in his arms, tightly folded—deliberately so, I suspected—across his chest. Other than that, he was a nice enough guy. And he looked really familiar to me somehow.

  “Just a few minutes. Please.” I flashed him my most sincere smile, stopping short of batting my eyelashes at him.

  Roy was unimpressed. Charm had never been one of my strong suits. He didn’t offer me one of the four plastic chairs that were stacked in the corner, which made me wonder if the agents who came before me had been met with the same discourtesy.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Roy announced.

  I started pacing, hands slammed to hips, in the expansive space between the door and the window beside his desk, bobbing along the wall with all the glossy photos in the makeshift giant org chart. His eyes went wide when I stopped, towering over him where he sat, nothing between us but my angry huffs. Unsympathetic toward Roy’s workload, I practically shouted, “Not for the murder investigation concerning one of your employees?”

  After wearing a few more paths in the linoleum in his small office, I cooled down and yanked one of the plastic chairs down from the stack and slammed it on the floor behind Roy’s desk without being invited to sit.

  “Get on with it,” Roy said.

  “How old are you?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m about to turn twenty-eight.”

  Two years younger than me. Jens’s age.

  “Wow, kinda young to have earned a manager’s slot, wouldn’t you say?”

  This earned me a cocky smile. “Kinda young to be an FBI agent, wouldn’t you say?” He shot back.

  “Touché. Are you from here originally?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Small talk sometimes relaxes people,” I said, knowing it was a load of crock.

  “It annoys me,” he countered, refolding his arms across his chest.

  “Me, too,” I said honestly. That earned me a bigger (albeit brief) smile. “How long have you managed this store?”

  “Two years,” Roy said, contempt in his pale eyes. He rubbed his long, bony fingers through his dishwater blond hair, pushing the strands into place again with habitual strokes.

  “Impressive. And before that?”

  “Before that I was assistant manager for three years and worked my way up from bag boy. I’ve worked here for twelve years, full-time for ten.”

  “Straight out of high school? Damn, that was ambitious.”

  I noted the muscles along his strong jaw bulging. “I’m saving up to go to college.”

  “To do what?” I asked with genuine interest.

  “I was …” His words trailed off, but his eyes widened slightly. He cleared his throat and quickly added, “Business.”

  I nodded but would have guessed he’d have been more interested in computers.

  “Did you know Michelle Freeburg?” I had years of practice interviewing job candidates, but not a single experience with interrogations. I was probably making a total fool out of myself for sure.

  Roy blinked several times before answering, “Of course. She worked for me.”

  “How long had you known her?”

  “For about fifteen years.” Roy stared at his hands fidgeting in his lap, averting his eyes. “We met in high school. As freshmen.”

  Now I knew why I had thought him familiar. He had been in Jens’s class at Central High School. But he l
ooked like a scrawny little boy back then. Not nearly the man he’d grown to be today. Got teased a lot, if I remember correctly. I think the kids called him Playboy Roy, but for the life of me, I don’t remember why. I prayed he wouldn’t suddenly recognize me, hoping I’d changed enough for him not to make the connection between Agent Genevieve and Liv Bergen—or think Agent Genevieve had facial features eerily similar to those of Jens Bergen, like the strong, tall frame, the long legs, and the friendly smile.

  I’d always laughed off the stories of my swan-like transformation in college from a grungy looking jock to an athletically built model, but I never quite believed everyone until now. Roy Barker had no idea who I was. And I wasn’t going to let this golden opportunity pass without using it to my advantage.

  “I told her about an opening here in the store her senior year. She had moved into her own apartment and needed to find work that would fit around her classes. Didn’t take her long to earn the key position as bookkeeper. My father promoted her almost immediately. She worked directly for him until he retired two years ago.”

  And yet, his dad didn’t place the same confidence in his own son until two years ago. I asked, “And she’s worked here ever since?”

  Roy had a far-off look in his pale eyes, his smile a bit eerie. “Ever since. Paid for her college, even though it took twice as long as if she’d gone to school full time.”

  I sensed I was getting somewhere. His cool veneer was starting to melt a degree or two. “A good worker?”

  “The best,” came his retort, as if Roy was offended that anyone would think otherwise. “She was my best worker. Never late, always working hard. Never complained about anything. Covered for anyone else’s shift whenever I needed her, as long as it didn’t interfere with her classes.”

  “Dream employee?”

  “Yeah, she was a dream all right,” he conceded, a slight blush befalling his hollowed cheeks. He turned his back to me and stared out the window above his desk overlooking the checkout lanes, intending to give the impression he was watching for something. I wasn’t buying it.