Where Monsters Hide

by M. William Phelps

  Whenever Kelly called Walt, Walt repeated, under Ogden’s direction, in one form or another, “I know nothing else,” which kept Kelly continually on edge.

  Looking in his rearview mirror, preparing to back out of his driveway and head into the station house, Ogden saw Kelly Cochran’s white pickup truck driving by directly. There she was driving up the road, turning her head as she drove by, projecting a laser-like stare at Ogden’s house.

  Damn, he thought. I got her.

  Kelly did not see him sitting in his truck.

  Ogden waited a minute and pulled out of his driveway. He made sure to stay back far enough so Kelly didn’t see him.

  Kelly drove toward the center of Hobart. Just outside the downtown city limit, she turned onto Third Street. Then she drove past Lakeview Park, before taking a right into the parking lot of Jerry Pavese Park, which hugged the northeastern shoreline of Lake George Dam and its lake.

  He stayed back. He watched as she parked her vehicle. He then drove past the parking lot and sped to the other side of the lake.

  “I raced around the lake and parked in front of a friend’s house. I called my friend as I was walking into her backyard. I told her not to be alarmed if someone calls the cops. It was just me . . . in her backyard.”

  Kelly got out of her white pickup truck.

  Ogden found a spot on the opposite side of the lake, a clear view of the Jerry Pavese Park parking lot. He had a set of high-powered binoculars, took a minute to find his target, dialed it in.

  “I had a dream a couple nights before this,” he explained. “Look, I’m not big on this stuff—don’t get me wrong—but I will take direction from wherever it comes if it seems good. This dream was surreal. In it, I stood at the base of a big tree that had been burned. I had a shovel in my hand. When I awoke, I was at peace. I felt as though I had found Chris.”

  Kelly walked around a swampy area of the lake for a few minutes. Then she found her way up into a heavily wooded area, disappearing from the detective’s view, before stepping out into an open space by the water.

  Ogden had her back in focus.

  She sat down on a fallen tree.

  “It was the perfect view for me to watch her,” he recalled. “So when I saw her go into this section of woods, then walk down by the water, I stared closely. I could tell with my optics that something was not normal. . . .”

  The tree Kelly sat on had fallen on its side after being struck by lightning. The base (trunk) was burned out.

  Ogden made note of where she sat. He knew the basic location fairly well. It meant something to Kelly, for sure.

  He watched for about thirty minutes and Kelly did nothing more than sit and think.

  After he was certain Kelly was gone, he found the location.

  “The tree had been struck by lightning and was charred. I ultimately sat right where she did and thought about things.”

  Staring at the trunk of the tree and the charred portion of it, Ogden came up with an idea.

  “I left that day without implementing it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought about it all that night. I knew this was going to change the case. I knew when I did this, it was going to get Kelly talking.”

  58

  PRESENCE OF EVIL

  JEREMY OGDEN PLANNED A TRIP TO IRON RIVER A FEW DAYS LATER. HE wanted Frizzo to show him around, take a firsthand look at everything. As he was backing out of his driveway: “Damn it all, if it wasn’t Kelly driving up my street again.”

  Ogden pulled back into his driveway and scooted down so she wouldn’t see him.

  Kelly passed his house and drove to the same spot in the woods by the lake.

  There she sat on that fallen tree once again.

  What is she up to?

  If Kelly was stalking him—and there could be no other way to perceive her behavior because Kelly had no reason to be on the same side of town where Ogden lived; it was nowhere near her house or place of employment—then Jeremy Ogden would do the same.

  Hours passed, the cat with his mouse in sight. Ogden observed as long as he could. He had a dinner planned with his youngest daughter that evening.

  “And I wasn’t going to miss it.”

  He left with Kelly still sitting on the tree.

  “It was time for me to implement my idea.”

  After his father-daughter dinner, Ogden packed a bag and drove through the night to Iron River.

  “Arriving early in the morning,” he remembered, “the sun was coming up. As I was driving into town, I was amazed by how big and vast the woods were in the area. And I realized immediately that Kelly was going to have to tell me where Chris was buried—or we were never going to find him.”

  Ogden checked into a local hotel. He rested. Then he hopped into his truck and set the GPS for Kelly and Jason’s Caspian home, 66 Lawrence Street. Five minutes away, when he pulled up, a complete, “remarkable, uneasy feeling” washed over the detective. Ogden could feel “a presence of evil” lurking, hovering over the house.

  After parking his truck, he walked around the garage, house, and woods in back, heading toward the Caspian Pit.

  He could feel it: complete maleficence. Whatever happened in that house was beyond description. There was no doubt Chris Regan had been murdered inside the Cochran house.

  Jeremy Ogden spent the next two days in Iron River. Chief Frizzo drove him to all the locations and shared all the detail she could recall about the case. Her feelings. Thoughts. Theories. They drove the routes Kelly and Jason would have driven and discussed how hard it had been for Frizzo to get any relevant information out of Kelly.

  Frizzo knew right away the case was in great hands and Ogden was going to finish what she had started long ago. But also, Frizzo later said, “I knew I had found my soul mate.”

  They’d spoken on the phone countless times. There was always something there. But now, in person, it was more than a spark. More than a connection he had felt when they spoke long-distance. There was an energy between them.

  Chemistry.

  * * *

  DETECTIVE JEREMY OGDEN RETURNED to Indiana a few days later. He woke up one morning at five, dressed in his gym clothes, and drove out to the park. He needed to put that idea into play.

  Ogden found the spot where Kelly had sat. He knew she’d be back. So he took out a pocketknife and carved CHRIS IS HERE in the trunk of the tree, where she was sure to see it. Then, to the right of where he knew she usually sat, he carved REGAN.

  A big, bold statement by the detective—a psychological rook moved into place.

  Checkmate.

  A day later, Ogden had morning court. Before session began, he wandered around the hallway, stopped and stared out a window. It was gorgeous outside. A sunny and warm day. Quite a rarity for Indiana in early March.

  She’s going to the park today.

  He had a feeling.

  “Jeremy?” someone called out behind him, startling the detective.

  “Yeah?”

  “Court is canceled today.”

  Ogden said nothing. He dashed out the door to his truck and took off for the park.

  As he was driving south across the bridge heading for Jerry Pavese Park, he spied Kelly’s white pickup truck pulling into the parking lot.

  Son of a bitch!

  He drove to his spot across the lake as Kelly parked and walked out to sit on the fallen tree.

  Ogden grabbed his binoculars. Jumped out of his truck. Made his way to his observation point. Just as he got into position, pointed the two circles on her, Kelly became flustered and ran from the fallen tree, disappearing into the woods.

  Moments later, she was in her truck driving away.

  Had she been spooked by what she saw?

  Ogden ran to his vehicle.

  He was too late. Kelly was gone by the time he made it to the parking lot.

  “I really never saw what was carved into the fallen tree,” Kelly told me later. “When I had heard that he did that, I mean, that�
��s . . . sick. Touché if he really did that—because I never saw it. I used to go there to get high. But I never saw that carving in the tree.”

  “This day was very important,” Ogden said. “I decided to drive over and talk to the Cochran family.”

  He caught Jason’s brother at the house.

  “You have a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Can you tell me about Kelly and what’s been going on lately?”

  Jason’s brother described how he’d stood, watching her, on the back porch of the house on the day Kelly spoke to Walt.

  “I thought she was going to hyperventilate and throw up.”

  As he spoke to Jason’s brother, Ogden’s phone blew up.

  Kelly.

  Texting.

  I need to talk.

  I need to talk.

  Please.

  I need to talk to you.

  This cannot wait.

  Kelly finally said she was going to head over to Veteran’s Memorial Park in town and would appreciate if Ogden met her there.

  “She’s desperate right now,” Ogden recalled. “I actually began to worry that she might hurt herself.”

  If Kelly died, Chris Regan’s whereabouts were going to be buried with her.

  Ogden told Jason’s brother he had to run.

  Pulling into the parking lot of Veteran’s Memorial Park, he looked left toward the memorial of six flags, five monuments. There were two benches in front.

  Kelly wasn’t there.

  He looked straight ahead into the parking lot.

  Her white truck was parked in the south corner.

  Ogden pulled up. Parked. Jumped out. Approached Kelly’s vehicle. Looked inside.

  Oh, shit . . . , the detective thought. Son of a bitch.

  Kelly was slumped over in the driver’s seat.

  59

  CHILDHOOD

  JEREMY OGDEN’S CHILDHOOD WAS NOT YOUR TYPICAL AMERICAN dream, culled from the wistful Midwestern image of a white picket fence, golf-course-green lawn, or some old dude sitting on his porch in a rocker, with a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth. Then again, in the scope of today’s world, what does the American dream represent?

  At eighteen, Jeremy Ogden met his biological father, Larry. Jeremy’s mother, Deborah, was young, innocent, and had fallen in love with Larry, but they never married. Jeremy’s sister Kimberly passed away when she was eighteen after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.

  “Kimberly’s death forever changed me,” Jeremy recalled. “The year she fought in and out of intensive care, I had to grow up quickly. Life-and-death decisions kind of do that to the human spirit.”

  These types of moments in life define us. For Jeremy, memories of Kimberly drive him.

  “Kimberly has been an angel watching over me my entire career. I also have a brother, Jeffrey, and a sister Jennifer.”

  The man Jeremy’s mother did marry, Charlie, Jeremy’s stepfather, became a role model, beginning with coaching Jeremy’s Pop Warner football team and mentoring Jeremy throughout his youth and into adulthood. They became so close that Jeremy stood in for Charlie as his best man when Charlie married Jeremy’s mother.

  “My uncle, John Ogden, raised me from my freshman year to graduation. I lived with him. He’s an incredible man and person. I grew up in the Calumet Township of Gary, Indiana. I went to Lake Ridge Middle School. It was like a mini gladiator academy—survival of the fittest.” Jeremy explained how he was forced to “fight [his] way out of more than one situation.” His mother ultimately sent him to live with his uncle John to get him out of that environment. “My freshman year I transferred to the River Forest school system in Hobart Township, Indiana. That’s where I lived with Uncle John. I graduated from River Forest. During my time at River Forest, I had a girlfriend whose father and stepfather were murdered. It made me think a lot. I always wanted to know how to solve homicides. Their murders are still unsolved. This is when I really began to think about a law enforcement career. After graduation, I worked as a bagger and midnight stocker at a local grocery store. I later took a job as a carpenter.”

  Jeremy moved to Florida and lived with his uncle for about a year. Then he went back to Indiana and continued working as a carpenter. He married young, at twenty-one. Divorced twenty-one years later.

  “I still had that itch for law enforcement and was running my own construction company at the time I returned from Florida. I applied to three different police departments at once and received offers from two. I chose Hobart.”

  * * *

  KELLY COCHRAN WAS UNCONSCIOUS.

  “I’m trying to wake her up and she’s not responding. She’s not waking up.”

  Ogden lightly slapped Kelly across the face. “Hey? Hey, Kelly? Come on.”

  He shook her by the shoulders.

  “Kelly?”

  Nothing.

  “Come on, Kelly, wake up!”

  She was breathing, but very shallow wisps.

  “I even gave her a sternum rub”—a practice EMTs and first responders use (knuckles from a closed fist pushed into the center of the chest) to revive people who are not alert and are not responding to verbal commands.

  Ogden called an ambulance.

  “Kelly? Wake up!”

  Before the ambulance arrived, Kelly came to.

  “I called an ambulance. They’re on the way,” he said after she opened her eyes and realized what was happening and where she was.

  “What did you do that for?” Kelly asked, upset.

  EMTs arrived and checked her out.

  “I haven’t slept in a few days.... I am very tired,” she told them. “I’m okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The ambulance left. Ogden sat with Kelly inside her truck.

  “What’s going on here, Kelly?”

  They talked for two hours. Ogden had a rough time getting his recorder to work. The sun had gone down and it was getting dark. Being alone with Kelly, unable to record the conversation, was not a good idea.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Can you meet me at Lake Park Restaurant? Let’s talk there.”

  Ogden felt she was ready to give up something.

  “Yeah, um, I guess . . . okay.”

  Ogden left. Kelly said she’d be right behind him.

  After a brief anxious period of not hearing from Kelly, her not showing up at the restaurant, he drove into town to look around. Then back to the restaurant.

  Kelly finally pulled in.

  Just before she got out of her truck, Kelly downed one milligram—on the street a full “bar”—of Xanax.

  They sat down at quarter to eight in a booth inside the restaurant. Kelly wore glasses and a blue blouse. Her shirt looked as if she’d slept in it for a few days. Ogden noticed scabs and small sores all over her face.

  “I know you have things to do,” Ogden said. “I know you have family . . . but at the same time, all you have to do is tell me. . . . You need to close this chapter in your life.”

  Kelly listened.

  “You can bring the family closure. You can bring yourself closure, Kelly. I mean, do you really want to live the rest of your life wondering when they’re going to come and get you? Because that is what’s going to happen. I promise you.”

  Kelly sat. Didn’t respond.

  “It’s the truth,” the detective said. “And the truth is very powerful.”

  As Kelly spoke, her voice cracked. She talked about life and death. “All we really have is this moment—today, if you think about it. . . .”

  “I know,” he said. “I almost died this past year.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doing your job?”

  “Yeah. Almost a goner.”

  Kelly was eager to say something. “What is it?” he asked.

  “If you tell me how my husband died, I will tell you what happened to Chris Regan.”

  Kelly smiled.

  She’s challenging me? Ogden th
ought.

  Kelly said it three times.

  Ogden shrugged.

  “Listen, Kelly, your husband was overdosed on heroin with three times the lethal dose and he was suffocated.” He paused. Took a sip of his water. “And you, Kelly, you were the only other person in the room with him.”

  Kelly stared at the detective.

  “So you think I murdered my husband?”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  * * *

  FROM THE MOMENT SHE first met Jeremy Ogden, Kelly “did not trust him.” She did not think she was being treated fairly. Kelly considered herself a “very good judge of character.” She “studied people.”

  Kelly told me: “I think he is a small-town cop who thought he could jump on something big. He toyed with me from the start and thought he was going to get something more.”

  * * *

  AT NINE P.M., THE RESTAURANT closed. Kelly hadn’t said much. She’d been standoffish and reserved, talking in circles. Yet Ogden understood he was breaking her down, day by day. Every time they spoke, she said a little more. It was coming. He could sense Kelly preparing herself to let go.

  He walked Kelly to her truck. She sat down in the driver’s seat, rolled the window down.

  Tomorrow was another day, Ogden knew. Tenacity. Fortitude. Patience. Ogden was playing chess; Kelly was playing checkers. He was in control.

  He turned to walk away. “Call me when you want to talk, Kelly. Text. Whatever.”

  “Hey,” Kelly said.

  He turned. “Yeah?”

  “Jason killed Chris.”

  “How?”

  “He shot him in the head. And it was fast. He died fast.”

  “We have to go to HPD right now, Kelly. We need to sit down and talk. Let’s go.”

  By now, Kelly was nodding in and out, having great difficulty staying awake. The Xanax had kicked her ass.

  “You cannot drive. You keep falling out.... You can jump in my truck and we’ll secure your vehicle. I’ll take you to HPD and we’ll talk further about this in a room.”

  60

  DOWNSIZED