Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  When they found her and brought her home Arthur would make her clean up. That was his job, taking care of Ellen when she was bad. After all it had been Arthur who made Dotty agree to the adoption, thinking she would never get pregnant. Insisting on a girl. Dotty didn't think Ellen would dare try to run away again, not after the last time, but you never knew with Ellen. Arthur said she had bad blood. Jeb and Jacob, their two sons who'd come along several years after they'd gone over to Idaho to fetch Ellen, had good blood, their own blood, but Ellen had been adopted and so had bad blood. Because she had bad blood, Arthur said, extraordinary measures had to be taken. Measures they didn't talk about. Measures Dotty had trained herself not to think about. Discipline was a man's business, a father's business, Arthur said, and Ellen needed discipline.

  Dotty called him. She knew he had gone to a job site somewhere and wouldn't pick up, but he'd get the message soon enough. She used her tiny voice, the one that meant she was really, really sorry. "Arthur, it's me. I'm sorry to bother you but Ellen's disappeared again. She didn't go to school and she hasn't come home. Sorry. Bye." She hung up, and sipped from her glass of ginny lemonade, and looked out the window. Her two boys played in the backyard. She watched Jacob pound on Jeb, then she watched Jeb wail. She waited for Arthur to call back. When he didn't call after ten minutes she heaved herself to her feet and went back upstairs to look again into Ellen's room. This time when confronted with the closed door she felt compelled to knock, and did so, softly, three times. She said "Ellen?" once. Then she opened the door.

  The dark, salty-rotten smell was stronger now. She flipped the overhead light switch but the light didn't work, so holding her breath she headed over to draw up the blinds. Walking across the carpet she stepped on something wet and squishy, and jerked her slippered foot up, disgusted. She looked down at a large, dark stain on the carpet. "Damn that girl!" she said aloud, images of Ellen abruptly filling her head with rage. Ellen pouting, sneering, that hurt look she got. "Ooops," Dotty added guiltily, and put her hand to her mouth as she looked around. Weren't supposed to swear. That was bad. Arthur would be angry if he knew. She switched on the bedside lamp, then got down on her knees and looked at the spot more carefully. It was almost black, thickly congealed atop the pink shag, and smelled horrid. She knew that smell from somewhere. What was it? What did that bad girl spill in here now? Aha! She saw the black edge of another spot that had leaked out from under the bed. She crawled around the stain and lifted the edge of Ellen's pink comforter to see what the girl had hidden. Her monthlies! That was the smell. That's when she screamed.

  It was nearly midnight before the Fibbies could get there from Salt Lake, called in when the kidnapping made it federal. By then the town cops and the county sheriffs and their minions had taken the stiff downtown, print-dusted and photographed the room, then sealed it off. They had logged in a digital camcorder and tripod that had been checked out of Tremonton High School, a bunch of unlabeled DVDs, some bloody clothing, and a couple of samples of blood-soaked pink shag carpeting. By the time they arrived at the house agents Larsen and Devereaux knew that all the prints in the room belonged to the missing girl, her father, and her mother. The DVDs—"weird, arty stuff," according to the local law—seemingly had been shot by the girl, and aside from friends, dogs, mother, brothers, and assorted nature scenes, the only men captured on the discs were two of Ellen's teachers and a couple of stern-looking fellows who were soon IDed as friends of her father. The blood on the carpet matched the father's. His t-shirt was next to him and his pajama bottoms were down around his ankles. He'd been stabbed three times in the back, and the deepest of the three punctures had pierced his heart. That's what killed him. The weapon had not been found. There was no ransom note; nor was there enough wealth in the Longford family to suggest a monetary motive. The killer or killers had apparently arrived on foot, or were dropped off, for they had taken Longford's car from the driveway—a three year old American-made four-door sedan with thirty-seven thousand miles on it. A car hardly worth stealing. Longford was a bit of a political player in the usual church and state style of small town Utah and so had made a few enemies along the way, but nothing to merit murder. That the kid was in detention before school and grounded after school suggested she was troubled, possibly enough to be involved with dopers. That might explain it. It was a starting point.

  They parked on the street and threaded their way through the small crowd of gawkers. White Devereaux and black Larsen. Larsen got the usual doubletakes from the locals on the sidewalk when he flashed his ID. He wore a modest blue suit, he had a mild face and a gentle manner, and Devereaux looked a hell of a lot more menacing with his bristly bandito mustache and his piercing black eyes, but in Utah Larsen got the glances. "Don't worry, Jack," smirked Devereaux as the uniform led them to the front door. "They all know you got your job through affirmative action, and that you don't deserve it." Larsen mock-glared at him. This was their usual routine, developed over time to lighten the load. Jack Larsen had placed at the top of his class at the academy. He spoke French, Italian, and Spanish, and Devereaux had barely mastered American. Larsen could outshoot, outrun and outwit him. But then, Larsen, the first African American to graduate from Palisades High School on the high rent side of LA, was the over-achieving only child of two psychiatrists. They both had expected him to choose between law and medicine. Instead he'd gone Bohemian, singing and playing blues harmonica in a band for six years after graduating Summa Cum Laude from UC Santa Cruz. For the last three of those half dozen years he took a lot of drugs. He told that part of his personal history tersely: nearly got crazy, nearly got busted, nearly got killed. Eventually he pulled out of it, and having seen how the users got it from both ends, the dealers and the law, he decided the only way to help was to stop the influx. And so he chose to become the law rather than practice it. Initially he aspired to DEA, ended up FBI.

  Schmoe Devereaux grew up in the Mission in San Francisco "fixing cars, eating beans with a bunch of Mexicans, and farting my way through high school," as he charmingly described it. His Nam time and training had helped ease him into the Bureau, and he'd spent enough hours dodging Charlie with blacks in country to know racism had no place in his heart or his nation. Stuck in the Utah office together, the black and white Californians had discovered they had a lot in common—and little in common with the Latter Day Saints. And so they’d become fast friends.

  They followed the uniform into the foyer. Larsen had a quick look around. Your typical middle American pad of the middle class variety: heavy dark wooden furniture, frilly curtains, bad art, wall-to-wall shag, big tv. Living and family rooms to the right, dining room and kitchen to the left, divided by a staircase with a landing halfway to the second story bedrooms. Ten houses on this block, they all looked like this one, inside and out. A distraught, drained-looking woman, obviously Mrs. Longford, emerged from the kitchen to meet them. "Hello, Ma'am," said Devereaux. He always spoke first. That lingering Louisiana accent his parents had imported from Cajun country to SF tended to put people at ease. As did his white skin. One of the tribe. "I'm Agent Morris Devereaux, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is Agent John William Larsen, also from the Bureau. We're here to..."

  "Find the men who did this," she said hoarsely, laying a hand on Devereaux's arm. He felt a tremor. "They killed...they took my daughter...my boys don't have a fath..."

  "I know Ma'am, and I'm sorry for your loss," Larsen said softly. "Very sorry. We intend to...do our best to track down the perpetrators and bring your daughter back."

  "Can we sit down somewhere, and talk?" Devereaux said, taking her elbow and guiding the widow into the living room. They headed for the dark brown sofa. Larsen wandered over to a display case against a far wall. It contained rifles and knives on shelves and racks behind glass. He could never get over this thing people out here had for weapons. He knew everybody carried these days, but in these parts, by God, they hung them on the wall and prayed to them. There was no lock on the case.
With two young boys in the house. He looked it over.

  How could they have missed this?! Or maybe they hadn't. Locals withheld info sometimes, not trusting the feds. That was the way things went these days. There was a knife missing...or rather, a knife that had been lying on a lower shelf had been moved up into the rack behind the glass, where the fancier knives and guns were hung. The exposed wood had bleached out, and so the dark shape of a missing knife showed like a thin shadow around the one that replaced it. On a lower shelf, a knife-shaped dustless area showed where the replacement had come from. The Longford woman wasn't a very good housekeeper. Larsen had smelled gin behind her mouthwash. This was not where the Cleavers lived. Father did not know best. The American Dream, Larsen had discovered in his decade in the bureau, too often hid perverse little nightmares. Kidnappers turned out to be Uncle Fred, or Cousin Bobby, looking for a little something on the side from a niece who had no choice in the matter. But Cousin Bobby wouldn't have knifed his uncle and stolen his car. Larsen waved a local lawman over. "Anybody print this case?" he asked.

  "Yessir," said the cop. "Just family prints is all."

  "Family?"

  "Yes sir. The victim, and the missing daughter."

  "The daughter's prints are on here? And no one else's?"

  "That's right sir. We matched some older ones with the two boys, but the freshest ones belonged to Mr. Longford, and to Ellen Longford." The daughter had been printed a few months back, when they arrested her for stealing some mascara from a store at the mall. She'd also run away from home twice in the last year.

  "Thanks." Larsen went over to join Devereaux and Mrs. Longford. He sat next to Devereaux, facing her. She looked composed. Schmoe had done his work, softening her up.

  "That's some collection your husband has," he said. "some fine-looking weapons."

  "Arthur loved his rifles," she said. "And his knives. He was teaching Jeb and Jacob to shoot."

  "What about Ellen?" Larsen said.

  "What about her?" she said, her tone oddly defensive.

  "Did she...was he teaching her too?"

  "About the guns and knives? No. Around here the men do the shooting, and the hunting, and the women....don't," she said. "That's the way Arthur said it should be."

  "So Ellen didn't ever get a chance to handle the weapons, or..."

  "I don't see what this has to do with...with them killing...with her disappearing," she said. "Why are you asking me about..."

  "Sorry, sorry, Mrs. Longford," Larsen said softly. "I was just curious." He looked at Devereaux. "I was wondering, Ma'am," Larsen went on again, after a moment. She looked at him, displeased yet helpless. "Wondering if...Mr. Longford...if you heard him get up last night, or if he usually looked into your daughter's room at a certain time at night, or..."

  "What do you mean?" she snapped. "Of course he looked in on her. She was...he was making sure she was OK. Isn't that what a father is supposed to..."

  "Of course, ma'am," said Larsen. "It's just that...I know Ellen had some problems at school—that she had detention, and that she was on restriction—and so I was just trying to figure out if there was something she'd been doing that would have...you have to understand, Ma'am, that the drug problems you read about in the big cities have come to places like..."

  "Ellen did not have a drug problem. She was...difficult. She didn't like the...some of the rules we made her live by. She used to be a very good student—they told us she was in the top ten percent on her IQ tests—but in the last year or so...things...she was having problems getting along, and..." she fluttered her hands helplessly.

  "I understand," Larsen said. "It's hard to be a teenager these days."

  "Hard to be a teenager's mother too. But she didn't have any...she didn't take drugs. She was a bad girl sometimes, but Arthur took care of that. He was going to straighten her out, he said. He knew what to do." She sniffled, and wiped her nose and eyes with a sleeve of her housecoat. Larsen was getting a distinct impression, of a superficially well-organized and self-controlled woman, barely hanging on. Below her, chaos. A chaos that had existed long before her husband got dead. There were a lot of ladies like her around. If you followed when they fell you could find what you looked for.

  "Sorry, ma'am," Devereaux said. "Sorry to put you through this, but...we have to find out as much as we can about...what might have led up to what happened."

  She stopped crying. "There's nothing else I can think of. I don't know any more than what I told you, and I already told it all to the police, too. You should be out there looking for them. I know it was some crazy drug addicts, they came to get money and rape my daught...rape Ellen, and Arthur tried to stop them and died for it, my God, they killed him with a knife, I found him dead! Dead under the bed!"

  "Yes, Ma'am," said Devereaux. "But..."

  Larsen cut in. "Can you recall Ellen or Mr. Longford ever meeting with anyone...I don't mean necessarily like a formal meeting, but just walking on the street...who they seemed to know, that you didn't know? Were there any strangers you can remember like that? Recently I mean."

  Her eyes darted, furtive for an instant. "Strangers? There are no strangers in Tremonton except people passing through. No." That woman in the restaurant bathroom, she and Ellen talked about something but I don't want to talk about her, Arthur wouldn't like that at all. Not one bit. No. She shook her head. "I think the drug addicts come up here and did this awful thing. You are the FBI! You have to find them!" She settled herself down. "Now, if you don't mind, can we finish tomorrow? I'm...sure you understand that I am very worn out now. I need my rest. I have to take the boys to school...I mean, I have to tell them in the...they don't even know that their Daddy's not coming home, I didn't let them see...I..." she looked bewildered.

  "That's fine, Ma'am," said Devereaux. He and Larsen stood. "We'll talk again in the morning. Meanwhile, the police will be here, one in the house and another outside, making sure you and your boys are safe all night. Just in case. We're going upstairs now to have a look around. You'll have to stay out of Ellen's room tonight but we'll finish in there tomorrow. Here's my card. Call me if you remember anything else, OK?"

  She took the card. "I'll do that, Mr. Devereaux. I promise," she murmured meekly. She glanced towards the kitchen, dying for a shot of ginny lemonade. But with a policeman in there she would have to wait.

  "The murder weapon was his," Larsen said quietly as he and Devereaux headed up the stairs. "There's a knife missing from that charming little display case."

  Devereaux said, "You think they missed it, or just forgot to tell the big bad feds?"

  "I think they missed it. But aside from that, Mrs. Longford smells," said Larsen as they nodded at the uniform guarding the door of Ellen's room. "The house stinks."

  "I know. But what is it?"

  They spoke softly, simultaneously, the line they lived by. "Something rotten in the state of Utah." Devereaux lifted the yellow tape and they stepped into the room. The smell of blood was overpowering. "The body was under the bed?" Larsen said to the uniform waiting in the doorway.

  "Yes sir."

  "What about the clothes?" He and Devereaux worked their way methodically over every inch of the room, separate but tuned, operating in unison.

  "His T-shirt was next to his body. Pajama bottoms down around his ankles."

  "No signs of a struggle? That's all?"

  "Yes sir. The bed was made up.You can see where the...there's a stain there, and another under the bed."

  "What about the camcorder?"

  "In the closet, sir. It was pointed at the bed, but there was no disk in it. We discovered the DVDs on the shelf by her bed. They're all..."

  "We heard about them. Thanks."

  "Right, sir."

  "What about these?" said Larsen, holding up several shrinkwrapped, boxed DVDs. He'd found them on the floor in the closet.

  "They're unused, so...we didn't run 'em...they printed the bag they found them in. Too slick to pick up anything."

&nb
sp; Larsen looked around, didn't see a trash container, and went into the bathroom. He came out a moment later. "Nothing in there," he said. "Seen enough for now?"

  "Sure," said Devereaux. "Let's beat it." A beeper sounded. Devereaux turned it off on his waist, then whipped out a cell phone and made a call. "What's up?" He listened for a moment, said, "We'll be there, thanks," and hung up. "They found his car in a parking garage."

  "Anything in the car?"

  "Nothing yet. Keys in the ignition. If there's anything else its history by now, judging by the work I've seen so far." They headed downstairs.

  "No shit," said Larsen, pulling a pink receipt out of his pocket. "Look at this."

  Devereaux took it as they stepped out the front door. "The receipt for the DVDs. So?"

  "So read it, you yahoo."

  Devereaux read it. "The girl bought five DVDs for cash. Big deal. They're right up..."

  "Four of them are right up there. Four. There's one missing."

  "So you're thinking..."

  "The psycho motherfucker, whoever he was, whatever he did, he got it on a DVD." They got in the car, Larsen at the wheel. "So where is it?"

  "The DVD? I don't know."

  "Not the disk. The car, Schmoemeister, the missing car. Where are we going?"

  "Hey, no need to get snotty, smart guy. Third and Grant. You saw downtown Tremonton. Just go that way, we'll find it."

  The car was left in a garage less than a mile from the house, so it would have been easy enough for the bad guy or guys to park, walk to the house, do their dirty work, then take the daughter in Longford's car and drive back to the garage and switch to another car. There was a little blood on the driver's armrest that typed out as his. There were a couple of dozen hairs, all belonging to one or another of the five members of the family. Nothing else, although the local police had pretty well raked over the car by the time they got there.

  The two agents checked into the Tremonton Inn at 2 am. The scrawny, supercilious desk clerk didn't have but one room, until Larsen flashed his badge and told him they were in town on official business and could maybe use his help. Miraculously another room came up available. Larsen stayed upstairs, Devereaux down. Devereaux, intensely allergic to dogs, sneezed all night in his ground floor room, a fact that irritated him since he'd seen a No Pets sign posted at reception. He had no other allergies, and so knew for certain that a dog had been in the room. Had the same clerk been on duty in the morning he would have complained, but some other creep, fat as a mountain, had taken the place of the scrawny asshole, so he let it slide.