The City PI and the Country Cop

by xxxxxxxxxxxx

  “Use this,” Keir said, coming up beside them. He held out a cut off sweatshirt sleeve. Using his knife, he sliced through Hoyt’s shirt so they could see the wound.

  Teague pressed it to Hoyt’s shoulder, glancing at Will as he did. The man was curled in a fetal position, his arms lashed behind his back, blood soaking into the ground.

  “Guess I was the only one who didn’t get shot,” Keir commented. “How bad is yours?”

  “Flesh wound,” Teague replied tersely. “Where are the damned medics? Hoyt’s bleeding badly. If the bullet hit a vein…”

  “Calm down. They’ll get here. We’re not exactly in the middle of Main Street.”

  They heard sirens off in the distance. Keir got up immediately, heading out of the clearing. “I’ll bring them back,” he called over his shoulder.

  It seemed like forever, although Teague knew logically it was only minutes, before Keir returned, closely followed by EMTs, police officers, and the police chief.

  * * * *

  Chapter 9

  Once Teague and Keir were released from the ER at the county hospital—mid-morning after the battle with Will Endicott—they were escorted back into town, to the police department.

  “How is Hoyt doing?” were the first words out of Teague’s mouth when he walked through the door to Chief Davis’s office. He had tried to find out before he left the hospital but was told that HIPAA wouldn’t allow the hospital to tell him more than that Hoyt was alive. He’d figured that would be the case, but gave it a try nonetheless.

  “He’ll be in intensive care for the next twenty-four hours,” the chief replied. “Since I have his power of attorney in case of emergencies, the doctors were able to give me the details. The bullet, thank God, missed the subclavian artery. If it hadn’t, he might well have bled out before the EMTs even got to him. It nicked the—” the chief glanced at a notepad on his desk. “The brachial plexus—which the doc told me is a bundle of nerves that control arm function—and fractured his clavicle. He made it through surgery and the doctor is fairly certain that he’ll regain the full function of his arm.”

  Teague blew out a long breath of relief before asking, “What about Will Endicott?”

  “To start with, that’s not his real name but I’ll get to that in a moment. The bullet went in, shattering two lower ribs. From there it bounced around, hitting his spleen and a kidney. He’s undergone preliminary surgery but it will take another round, they say, before all the damage is repaired. We won’t be able to interview him for several days.”

  “But he will live?”

  “Barring complications, which are possible of course.”

  Teague nodded. “Who is he in actuality?”

  Again the chief consulted his notes. “I received the results on his fingerprints twenty minutes ago from IAFIS. According to them, he is Bradley William Irwin, male Caucasian, age thirty-two, born in Bent Township, which is in the northwest corner of the state.” Looking up again, he said, “That’s all we have on him at the moment but once we do a background check…”

  “Do you mind if I have my agency run one? I know it’s stepping on your toes.”

  Chief Davis frowned momentarily before replying. “If you have people who know what they’re doing, I don’t see why not.”

  “I do, and they’re experts. It’s part of what we do on a daily basis.”

  The chief handed over his notes and Teague placed a call to Jake Baxter, relaying the information and why he needed to know everything he could find on Mr. Irwin as soon as possible.

  While Teague was on the phone, Chief Davis asked Keir how he was doing.

  “According to the docs, I’ll live,” Keir replied with a small grin. He touched the bandages on his throat. “Abrasions, strain from when he jerked me off the ground with the rope, but other than that I’m good.”

  “What about up here?” the chief asked, tapping his temple.

  “Meaning because I almost became victim number six? I knew that wouldn’t happen. I had Teague and Hoyt as backup. Still…” His expression darkened. “I got a taste, however mild, of what those boys went through. Not the sodomy, thank God, but the terror and the strangling.” He shuddered.

  Teague put his arm around Keir’s shoulders, saying quietly, “You did a great job. Thanks to you there won’t be any more kids going through what they did.”

  “Thanks to both of you, and Hoyt,” Chief Davis added firmly. “I take it your wound was relatively minor, Teague, since you’re up and moving already.”

  “Yep. It was superficial. In and out with nothing major hit. They shot me full of antibiotics and a painkiller, bandaged the wound, and told me to get out of their hair. Well, maybe not the last but…”

  The chief chuckled. “Understood. What are your plans now?”

  “After we find out more about Will, or rather Bradley Irwin? Stay here until you can interrogate him. I want; no, I need to know why he began killing the same way as the murderer almost thirty years ago. Did Irwin know him? Or is he just a copycat?”

  “You need some sort of resolution about what happened to your friend,” Keir said.

  “Exactly. I have to find out what prompted someone to do that to Chris and the two other boys.”

  “You realize,” the chief said, “that if Irwin is a copycat you won’t get that.”

  Teague sighed. “I know. At least I, we’ll, get some idea of the mindset that makes a man go to such extremes.”

  * * * *

  After being debriefed by Chief Davis on what went down during the shootout and capture of Bradley Irwin, Teague and Keir returned to Teague’s motel room. Since they no longer had to remain undercover, Teague packed his bags and, after picking up the Trek from the airport parking lot, they moved to one of the better motels in Faircrest, getting adjacent rooms.

  Keir came into Teague’s room, once he’d unpacked what few clothes he’d brought with him. “I have to go shopping,” Keir stated.

  Teague looked at him, realizing the young man was wearing the same jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt he’d had on when he first arrived in Faircrest. “I take it everything else you brought with you was for going undercover.”

  “Yeah. And if we’re sticking around…”

  “You know you don’t have to. I’m sure Jake would be glad to have you back at the agency.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?” Keir asked, his expression a mix of amusement and hurt.

  “Not at all,” Teague protested. “I could actually use your company until all of this wraps up.”

  “You’ll have Hoyt soon enough.”

  “First off, I suspect he’s going to be in the hospital for the foreseeable future until he’s healed enough to leave. Secondly, he does have a life and now that this is over I’m sure he’ll want to get back to it.”

  “With you as part of it,” Keir said slyly.

  “Do not start with that! Yeah, we might be interested in each other on a…a superficial level, but it wouldn’t work. He’s small town, I’m big city, and the town and city are too far apart, both physically and in attitudes.”

  “But…”

  “Drop it, Keir.”

  Keir looked as if he wasn’t going to, then shook his head disgustedly and changed the subject. “I have to pick up the car I rented and return it. At least there’s a branch here in town so I don’t have to drive all the way back to the airport.”

  “Then let’s get that taken care of, go shopping, and get something to eat.”

  “Eat and then do the rest?”

  Teague smiled, replying, “That works, too,” happy to have diverted Keir from the subject of Hoyt. How long that will last is the question. And what am I going to do about the problem? He wasn’t certain which problem he meant—Keir’s attempts to play cupid, or Hoyt himself. One thing was certain though, as far as Teague was concerned. He’d be leaving town as soon as possible, for his own good and Hoyt’s.

  * * * *

  It was early evening by the t
ime Teague and Keir returned to the motel. Jake had called to say he was emailing Teague with what he’d found out about Bradley Irwin so the first thing Teague did was get on his laptop to check his email and download the file Jake had sent.

  Name: Bradley William Irwin

  DOB: 1982

  Place of birth: Bent Township, Colorado.

  Father: Corwin John Irwin—died 2013

  Mother: Linda Marie Irwin nee Ham—died 2013

  Father’s occupation: Pastor

  Mother’s occupation: Housewife

  Siblings: None

  “That’s pretty cut and dried,” Keir commented.

  “Then we come to this,” Teague replied. “His father’s church is fundamentalist, although according to what Jake found out, not one that’s listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extreme branch.”

  “So Will…Okay, I have to start thinking of him as Bradley Irwin. Anyway, he might have been indoctrinated from an early age to hate gays.”

  “Hard to tell from this, but it’s possible. Gays, blacks, anyone who didn’t fit into the church’s preconceived ideas of who are acceptable in the eyes of their God. And if Irwin is gay…” Teague shook his head.

  “He might not be, you know. He could have been pretending so he had an excuse to go hunting.”

  “We won’t know until after Chief Davis gets a chance to interrogate him.”

  “And that won’t happen if Irwin hires a lawyer, and you know he will since he’s facing murder and attempted murder charges,” Keir said sourly.

  “True.” Teague kept reading. “He’s college educated. Works as a salesman for a large pharmaceutical company.”

  “So he probably travels all over the country. Why did he end up here and start killing? What set him off about Faircrest specifically?”

  “It fit whatever parameters he had?”

  Keir nodded. “Or it…no, it couldn’t remind him of the towns where the original killings happened. He’d have only been eleven or twelve then.”

  “I wonder…” Teague scrolled through the information Jake had sent. “When Irwin was nine, his father was relocated by his church from Bent Township to the town of Glenley.” Going to his search engine, Teague typed in the name and hit enter. “There are three towns with that name in the country and guess what.”

  “One of them is in Colorado.”

  Rather than reply, Teague brought up a map site and input ‘Glenley, Colorado’. “Bingo.” He tapped the map. “Sixty miles north of Collingswood. I need to call Slater with this info, and Chief Davis.”

  “Just because they lived there…” Keir said. “I mean, I don’t see a twelve-year-old…”

  “No, but what if it was his father who did those murders?”

  “Like father, like son?” Keir replied almost disbelievingly.

  “That is a stretch, I agree, especially considering that Irwin didn’t do anything until now.” As he replied to Keir, Teague dialed Detective Slater’s number. His call was answered almost immediately and after letting Slater know who was calling, Teague said, “We caught the man who murdered the two boys here in Faircrest.”

  “So I heard. Congratulations,” Slater said. “Have you been able to talk to him?”

  “No. That won’t happen for at least a couple of days at the earliest. I do have information on him.” Teague filled Slater in on the bare details before saying, “I’m going to email you the file. I want you to go through it and see what you think rather than my telling you my thoughts now. I don’t want to prejudice you, if that makes sense.”

  “It does.” Slater gave Teague his email address, and after congratulating Teague again, they hung up.

  By then it was late enough that Teague thought Chief Davis would have gone home for the day. So he called the police department, planning on leaving him a message. Instead his call was transferred to the chief.

  “My people pulled together information on Bradley Irwin,” Teague told the chief when he answered his phone. “Some of it is quite interesting.”

  “Bring it over if you would.”

  “I can send you the file via email.”

  “Please do, and come by now, if that’s all right with you, so we can go over it together.” The chief chuckled. “I suspect you’ve already formed some opinions about him.”

  “Definitely. We’ll be there in twenty, give or take.” With that said, Teague hung up and then emailed the file.

  “Grab your jacket, we’re—”

  Keir laughed. “I was standing right here. I know.”

  * * * *

  Despite why they were back at the police department, the first thing Teague asked Chief Davis was, “Is there any update on Hoyt?”

  Closing a file he had open on his computer, the chief replied, “He’s out of intensive care and doing as well as can be expected. We haven’t talked yet because he’s still sedated.” The chief added, in amusement, “Right now he looks like a mummy from his neck and shoulder to his right elbow due to the bandaging. The doctor who did the surgery assured me that Hoyt will probably regain full use of his arm, although he’ll need physical therapy for a while.”

  “Thank God.”

  “As for Mr. Irwin. He’s set for a second surgery in the morning to finish repairing the damage done by Hoyt’s bullet.”

  “Too bad Hoyt didn’t kill him and save the state the bother,” Keir muttered angrily.

  “Then we wouldn’t be able to find out why Irwin started killing in the first place,” Teague pointed out, gripping Keir’s shoulder.

  “I know, but damn.”

  Turning back to Chief Davis, Teague asked, “Have you looked at the file yet?”

  “I just started and from what I read so far it contains the same information we’ve come up with. When you called I was working on a report about our search of the furnished apartment Irwin rented.”

  “Find anything useful?”

  “Like a diary where he wrote down every kill? I wish. Unfortunately there was just what you’d expect for a man who travels for his job. Clothes, toiletries, sample cases of drugs he was peddling for the company he works for. Also, a couple of well-read bibles. One, from the flyleaf, belonged to his father.”

  “His parents died last year. A murder/suicide, according to…If you open the file again I can show you,” Teague said.

  “Interesting.” Chief Davis opened it then moved so Teague could sit. Teague scrolled down to the death information for Irwin’s parents. “The father was shot at close quarters with a gun they kept in their bedroom for protection. His wife then shot herself, according to the coroner.”

  “No note left,” the chief said, reading over Teague’s shoulder. “And according to this, the neighbors stated that the couple appeared to be happily married.”

  “What if…?” Keir paused, looking at Teague. “What if you’re right and Pastor Irwin was the original killer? Somehow Mrs. Irwin finds out what he did, well after the fact, is horrified, and decides he needs to pay for his sins. So she shoots him and then, unwilling to face the consequences of her actions, kills herself.”

  “And interesting theory,” Teague agreed. “It could explain why Bradley Irwin began his killing spree, even though he waited a year to start up.”

  “How would he know about what his father did?” the chief asked.

  “Presuming we’re onto something here, the same way his mother did, however that was. Damn it, I wish Hoyt hadn’t shot him so we could ask him now.”

  “If Hoyt hadn’t, we be three more of Irwin’s victims,” Keir said sardonically. “We’ll get our chance, or rather the chief will, once Irwin is out of intensive care and recovering.”

  “And has lawyered up which means we may never find out,” Teague stated angrily. He looked at Chief Davis. “There was nothing in the apartment pointing directly to his crimes? No rope or objects he used on the boys?”

  The chief rolled his eyes. “Don’t you think I’d have told you if there was?”

  “Yea
h. Sorry. I’m just frustrated. I’ve been living this for the last two years. Ever since they identified Chris’s body and linked him to the murders as another of the killer’s victims.”

  “Meaning you need closure,” the chief said, patting Teague’s back. “Understandable. You’ll get it. It will just take time.”

  Teague nodded, getting up from the computer. “Okay, we should get out of here so you can go home. Do you think they’ll let me see Hoyt in the morning?”

  “I’ll check,” the chief told him, “but I don’t see why not. I’ll let them know you’ll be stopping by.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Soon after he got up Friday morning, Teague got a call from Detective Slater.

  After thanking Teague for the file, Slater said, “My first thought, going through it, is that Pastor Irwin was the man who killed the boys in this area, based in part on the fact his wife killed him and then herself, even though that happened years later.”

  “That’s the theory we came up with as well,” Teague agreed. “Not that we can prove it.”

  “Let me do some investigating from my end, now that we have a name. I might be able to find out more about Pastor Irwin than is in your file.”

  “If you do…”

  “Of course I’ll let you know. I really hope he’s our man. I’d like to write ‘Solved’ on my files about the murders.”

  “We both would.” They talked a bit more, Teague filling Slater in on the details of Irwin’s capture, and then they hung up.

  Keir showed up a few minutes later, suggesting they get some breakfast before heading to the hospital, which they did.

  When he and Keir entered the hospital an hour later, Teague checked in at the front desk. The receptionist said he was expected, telling him that Hoyt was in room 310.

  “Do you want me to wait here?” Keir asked when they got to the third floor waiting area.

  “No. I know you want to see him, too. To make certain he’s really alive and…well, not kicking but…” Teague replied with a smile.