One and Done (Sam Johnstone Book 2)

by James Chandler

  “Because of one incident?”

  “Well, that and the fact that Wyoming law doesn’t deal with discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. It’s a real sore point for some people. My sister lives in Seattle and she told me some of her gay friends won’t even visit Wyoming for fear they could be killed.”

  “Seriously?”

  “That’s what she said.” Cassie shook her head. “If this is a hate crime, it’s going to be bad.”

  “They’re all bad,” Sam said.

  “Oh, I agree, Sam. I’m just saying if this is because he was gay—well, that’s just going to reaffirm every stereotype of Wyoming out there.”

  “Interesting,” Sam said. “What was that kid’s name again?”

  Beretta was having breakfast and reading the paper. “Holy crap!” he said, putting down his bowl of oatmeal.

  “What is it, dear?” Lucy asked. She was wearing her workout clothes, drinking coffee, and eating a bran muffin. After he left for work, she would go to the gym and meet with her personal trainer for an hour. It was expensive on a small college president’s salary, but she insisted upon it.

  “Look at this! It sounds like they found a body—and on campus, no less. Damn it! Why didn’t I get a call from Jeb Richter? Why am I having to find out from the damned newspaper? What the hell are we paying him for?”

  “His poor family; they must be so distraught,” Lucy said.

  “I’m sure they are—but what about me? I can’t afford this kind of publicity, Lucy! We’re this close to getting out of this hellhole.” He held his thumb and index finger inches apart. “I just sent off my expression of interest for that job in Massachusetts!”

  “I just feel so bad for his family,” she said. “They lost their child.”

  “And now we’re going to have the press descending on us like locusts. It’s going to be terrible.” He stood, handed her the paper, and put on his suitcoat. “My press officer is inexperienced, we’ve really got no place to hold press conferences, and we’ve got some students on this campus who are . . . well, they’re damned insensitive to what’s going on in the world, let’s just say that!”

  “It says here that her ‘sources’ told her it was Kaiden,” she said. “Maybe it’s not.”

  “That’s a little more than I’m willing to hope for right now,” he said, bending over and putting a spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. “Sonuvabitch! I cannot believe my bad luck.”

  Punch had been called to the principal’s office.

  “What is this?” Lucas asked, turning his monitor so Punch could see the online article’s headline: SOURCES: BODY LIKELY TO BE THAT OF MISSING GAY STUDENT. “How the hell did she come up with that?” Lucas demanded.

  “No idea,” Punch said. “I specifically told her we had no idea what gender the body was. I told her we’d put something out as soon as we know.”

  “She says ‘sources’ told her.”

  “She’s making that up,” Punch said. “I told her we’d get something out when we knew. According to Jensen, she had that story up half an hour later. The only sources she has are between her ears.”

  “You’re probably right,” Lucas said. He stood and looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with the mayor here in ten minutes. So, is it that kid?”

  “I think so,” Punch said, drinking from a red coffee cup shaped like a shotgun shell. “The guys who recovered the body told me it was a male, approximately the right height and weight. But Dr. Laws hasn’t looked at it yet. Supposed to start the examination here in an hour or so.”

  “Okay, keep me posted,” Lucas said. He moved his mouse to look at the comments below the story, then straightened and gestured at the screen. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

  “You mean in general, or is your question more specific than that?”

  “I mean whoever wrote this story—this Sarah Penrose. What the hell difference does it make if the kid was gay?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s a reaction to that kid getting killed down in Laramie.”

  “That was twenty years ago!”

  “I know.”

  “My department pursues all crimes, regardless of the nature of the victim! I’ve got a dozen people who’re gay in jail right now, and a couple more who identify as something other than what you’d think they are given the plumbing God gave ’em! We accommodate—no one can say we don’t!”

  “I understand, Chief. But you have to understand that a lot of people from elsewhere—”

  “Don’t know what the hell they are talking about!” Lucas was pacing his office now. “You read that crap people are saying in the comments?” he asked, gesturing toward the monitor. “You’d think we were some sort of cavemen here.”

  Punch sat quietly, nodding.

  “All this is going to do is complicate everything, Punch. We’ve got a dead kid who—whatever his sexual orientation, color, political persuasion, or favorite football team—deserved better. Let’s get this thing figured out, now!”

  “Got it,” Punch said. “I’m going to get everyone started before I go see the medical examiner.”

  “And I’m gonna tell the mayor you are on this and feeling positive about a quick arrest.”

  “Chief, we don’t even know a crime was committed yet,” Punch cautioned.

  “Don’t confuse me with facts,” Lucas said. “Now go!”

  Two hours later Punch was in the morgue. “So, Doc, what do you know?” he asked Dr. Ronald B. Laws, M.D., Custer County’s contracted medical examiner. Laws had done a residency in pathology some years ago before turning to internal medicine. He was in private practice locally and contracted with the elected coroner “Doc” Fish to do the actual work of the medical examiner.

  “Well,” Laws began, “not a lot. I can tell you that it is a young adult male. Slender build. Maybe 5’10”, 150 pounds.”

  “How long before you’ll have an identification?”

  “I should have something for you later today.”

  “Can’t you tell by looking at him?”

  “No,” Laws said, pulling back the sheet covering the body. A distorted, purplish mass presented itself where the face should have been. “He’s unrecognizable.”

  Punch looked at the purple mass and quickly averted his eyes. “He’s that. Any idea how long this guy’s been dead?”

  “How long has the Miles kid been missing?”

  “Ten days, maybe two weeks?”

  “That’s consistent with what I’m seeing here, I think. This body has been partially preserved due to the low temps and the fact that it was in the snow. Well, except for the upper torso and head, which were in the water when it wasn’t frozen. But post-mortem decomposition is obviously well underway.”

  “Obviously,” Punch mimicked. “What happened there?” He pointed to an obvious injury to one of the body’s hands.

  “Not sure. Could have been done before he died, or it could be animals.”

  “Any idea on cause of death?”

  “I’ll get to the X-rays here shortly, but there are obvious injuries to the head,” Laws said. “Preliminarily, I’d say he had a broken jaw and suffered a severe head injury.” He pointed to the misshapen jaw and area of interest on the back of the skull. “Might have taken one to the eye, as well.”

  “Got beat up before he died?” Punch asked. He was thinking about an irritated Davonte following Miles out the door.

  “I would think so, but again, I’ll know more later.”

  “Can you keep me updated?” Punch asked. “There’s a lot of interest in this one.”

  “I’ve heard,” Laws said, removing a large scalpel from a plastic sleeve and raising it to examine it under better light. “I’ll let you know when my report is ready, of course. Sure you don’t want to hang around? I can always use an extra pair of hands.”

  “Positive,” Punch said as he left the morgue. “Thanks, Doc.”

  The canyon walls seemed to reach the azure sky. Aside from the so
und of water against rock and the wind in the stand of Engelmann spruce lining the creek, Sam heard only the occasional screech of a hawk. The big birds were circling above, hunting for mice and varmints moving around on the snow. He was fishing for Yellowstone cutthroat, a native species nearly depleted following the introduction of brook trout into this remote watershed. The brook trout had been eradicated a few years back, and when a client of Sam’s had let it be known that this water now had sizable cutthroat, he’d vowed to make it before winter fully set in. It was a glorious late fall day, unseasonably warm, and he’d spent several hours catching and releasing decent fish. The walking was easy, which he appreciated. As bizarre as it sounded, his missing left leg had been troubling him of late, and he’d had second thoughts before heading out, but knew in his heart that if he didn’t go, he would likely regret it. Except for a major storm a few days prior, it had been a dry fall, so the ground was firm under the couple inches of snow remaining. Working his way upstream, Sam saw only undisturbed white stuff—no signs that anyone else had walked the banks. He was appreciating his good fortune when he saw a large trout finning in the shallows behind a boulder the size of a footlocker. He flipped his fly into the current on the side of the rock, watched it drift into the slack water downstream, and set the hook on the fish when it struck. He was kneeling in the creek, removing the cutthroat from the hook, when the hair on his neck stood on end.

  He was being watched.

  He dropped his rod with the fish still on the line and drew his pistol from the shoulder holster. Slowly, he crawled to the bank, keeping the weapon dry and scanning the hillside for enemy. Despite the buzzing in his ears he was acutely aware of his own breathing. Seeing nothing, he prepared to make a three-second rush to a boulder in a nearby stand of bare aspen, which would afford him both a better view of the draw he was in and a more defensible position. With a quick look behind him, he rushed uphill to the trees. “I am up, I am moving, he is aiming, I am down,” he thought to himself, just as he’d been trained at Fort Benning. At the end of his rush he slid into a slight depression in the earth behind the boulder, rolled, and began scanning for signs of enemy.

  He held his breath to slow his breathing and steady his aim if necessary, then focused on a brush pile approximately twenty yards uphill. The Taliban would be in there. He saw movement and prepared for the assault. He flattened himself and with one hand unsnapped the case holding his hunting knife, extracted it, and placed it in the dirt next to him. The buzzing had disappeared, and his hearing was now acute. He took a deep breath and awaited the assault, reminding himself to aim center of mass and wait until the enemy was within ten yards to fire. Seeing movement in the brush, he extended the pistol in front of him with both hands, held his breath, and readied himself for the attack. But instead of Taliban fighters rushing his position he saw only the back end of a mountain lion sprinting up the side of the snow-and-brush-covered hill to his west. Relief flooded through him, and—still shaking—he rolled over on his back in the melting snow, closed his eyes, and laughed until he cried.

  Jon Middleton was the Custer Police Department’s computer forensic examiner. With the help of the local internet service provider and Miles’s mom—who had given him some basic information about the young man—he had been able to figure out Miles’s passwords and personal identification numbers, and had reviewed and copied everything on Miles’s smartphone and laptop. He was at his desk looking at a computer when Punch entered his office. “Jon, what do we have?” Punch asked.

  “Plenty,” Middleton said. “The kid was indeed gay, if the porn he’d been accessing is any indication. Here, let me show you—”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Punch said. “No different than if he was straight and looking at girls, right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “What else?”

  “I think he was selling weed.”

  “Really?” Punch asked, feigning ignorance. “Why is that?”

  “Look at this,” Middleton said, bringing up a text passage he had copied and saved on his desktop. “He’s talking about pizza here, but I don’t think that’s what he is selling.”

  Punch read the passage. “Yeah, that’d be some expensive pizza.” They shared a laugh before Punch, turning serious, asked, “You get me a list?”

  “I did. I even printed it out for your dinosaur self.” Middleton indicated a file folder full of papers. “There’s a lot of names in his contacts.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll look through this stuff. But to cut to the chase here, who was the last person he spoke with?”

  “Guy named Davonte Blair. Before that, guy named Ronnie Norquist. About the same time. Middle of the night on the 5th, early morning on the 6th. Not unusual, though.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’d say the three of them were in contact daily, if not hourly.”

  Punch nodded at Jensen, who had just walked into Middleton’s office. “Well, they knew each other from the basketball team,” he observed.

  “At least,” Middleton said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s all in there,” Middleton said, indicating his report. “Unless you want to look at the pictures.”

  “Do I?” Punch opened the report.

  “Probably not.”

  “Okay,” Punch said. He read for a moment. “That it?”

  “No. Check this out.” Jensen dropped a spreadsheet on Punch’s desk. Punch took a look at it, squinted, and looked up at Jensen. “Give me the short version.”

  “Jon’s given us a record of everywhere Miles was on the night he disappeared, as well as all of his texts and everyone he spoke with on his phone,” Jensen said. “We’ve even got a record of the websites he was looking at that night.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Everything stopped at around 2:30 a.m. on the 6th,” Middleton said.

  “That’s consistent with what we knew,” Punch observed.

  “Right, and his phone tracks with Norquist saying Kaiden left Davonte’s apartment at between 1:00 and 1:15 a.m. Looks like he went to his dorm, then out to where his body was found.”

  “What else?” Punch asked.

  “This is good. Last text to Miles was from Davonte. Lemme see.” Jensen looked through his notes. “Here it is: ‘Need to talk. Meet me at your place. Now.’”

  Middleton was nodding. “Good stuff, Jon,” Punch said.

  “Thanks,” Middleton said.

  “Okay, Jensen, get a warrant for Davonte’s phone—now.” Punch pointed at the clock. “I want to find out what else is on there, and I don’t want to have to wake Downs or Daniels.”

  Punch and Ronnie were in an examination room at the police station. It was mid-morning and Punch had asked Ronnie to come down to the station to talk. “Ronnie, I asked you to come in and talk to me because we’ve had some new developments,” Punch began, gesturing for Ronnie to sit. “And some of them involve you.”

  Ronnie remained standing and looked at Punch uncertainly. “Do I need a lawyer? My—my dad is a lawyer.”

  “I know who he is,” Punch assured him. “Why would you need a lawyer?”

  “Well, my dad says that you should never talk to the cops if you . . . well, you know.”

  “Ronnie, I’m just trying to get some information. I’m trying to find out who killed your friend. Sit down.” Punch again gestured toward the chair across the desk.

  Ronnie sat, shifted uncomfortably, and looked at Punch. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I’d like to ask you about a couple of things,” Punch began. “Things you didn’t tell me when we spoke last time.”

  Ronnie feigned innocence. “Like what?”

  He was a terrible liar, Punch thought. “Like the fact that Kaiden was dealing weed.”

  “I don’t know anything about—”

  “Ronnie, don’t try to bullshit me, okay? I’ve imaged his phone. I’ve got it all in writing. No one is paying a hundred and f
ifty dollars for pizza, okay?”

  “I know he sold a little weed on the side, but—”

  “You should. You were a pretty regular buyer, right?”

  “Maybe I do need a lawyer.” Ronnie started to stand.

  “Sit down, Ronnie. I couldn’t give a crap about you buying weed from Kaiden,” Punch said. “I’m interested in who would want to kill him.”

  “I—I don’t have any idea.”

  “Think, Ronnie. He owe anyone any money?”

  “Well, not that I know of. His mom sent him money every month. He always seemed to have enough to get by,” Ronnie said. “I mean, we’re in college. No one has any money, know what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” Punch said. “Where did he get his weed?”

  “I don’t know. He was kind of secretive about that.”

  “Denver?”

  “No, someone brought it up here to him.”

  “Was it Gustafson?”

  “What? Why would you think that?”

  Punch looked at Ronnie for a long moment. “Ronnie, remember when I said that I wasn’t really interested in the weed thing right now?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s true. But if I find out that Kaiden dealing weed had anything to do with his death, and if I find out you had information that could’ve helped me find out who killed him and you withheld it, well, then I could get real interested real fast. Get me?” Punch asked. “So, let me ask again: Did anyone owe Kaiden money?”

  “Yeah, lots of people—according to him,” Ronnie said.

  “You?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “How much?”

  “Maybe one fifty or two hundred. Am I a suspect?”

  “Everyone is a suspect.” Punch unwrapped a piece of gum and stuck it in his mouth. He offered one to Ronnie, who declined. “Who else?”

  “Well, to hear him talk, lots of people.”

  “Davonte?”

  “Well, yeah.”