Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Read online

  Three-Ways

  A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

  Book 4

  Mike Markel

  Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

  Copyright © 2014 by Mike Markel

  All rights reserved. No portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental.

  The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series:

  Big Sick Heart (Book 1)

  Deviations (Book 2)

  The Broken Saint (Book 3)

  Three-Ways (Book 4)

  Fractures (Book 5)

  The Reveal (Book 6)

  Visit Mike Markel at MikeMarkel.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Series

  About the Author

  Fractures: Prologue

  Prologue

  She stood on the concrete pad outside his apartment, squinting as the headlights swept past every few seconds, even now, a few minutes before midnight. She shielded her eyes and peered through the picture window into his small, unlit living room. Then she glanced down the row at the other four apartments. One picture window was outlined by a rectangle of light.

  The apartment next door was dark. She knew the unit was occupied, but she didn’t know who lived there or what hours they kept. Since his apartment was the end unit, there was only that one neighboring unit.

  She stepped onto the pebbled black rubber mat, one side torn away so that it read Welcom, and put her ear to the door. She waited a moment, listening for any sounds from inside the shabby one-bedroom unit in the old flat-roofed, one-story brick building four blocks from campus.

  She knocked, three taps on the battered wooden door. A few seconds later, she heard his muted footsteps. A light came on in the living room and the door opened. “I didn’t expect you,” he said. She did not reply. He adjusted the belt on his dark green terrycloth bathrobe.

  “Please.” He stepped back, sweeping his arm, gesturing for her to enter.

  She walked in and placed her bag on the small pine table near the door. Her eyes scanned the humble furnishings: a threadbare blue couch, two mismatched upholstered chairs, a black plastic entertainment center with a TV, a pile of a dozen DVD cases, and a portable stereo system with small speakers built-in. A few books lay on the wooden coffee table, one of them open at the spine. Off in the corner was the tiny kitchen, just a small refrigerator, a narrow range, a white enamel sink chipped down to the black steel, and a few feet of speckled Formica countertop.

  Her gaze settled on the three sets of dirty dishes and glasses on the small round kitchen table with its two matching dining chairs.

  He said, “Is there something in particular you needed?”

  She looked at him and began to unbutton her short cotton jacket. She watched him as his eyes were drawn to the blue and yellow silk scarf knotted loosely at the neck of her sheer silk cream blouse with its top two buttons open. Removing her jacket, she watched him stare at the outlines of her nipples shifting against the silk. Her jacket rustled as it slid off her shoulders and fell softly onto the carpet.

  He smiled as she removed her clothing deliberately. First the blouse, and then the skirt and the panties. She left the blue and yellow scarf knotted at her throat. She slipped out of the low heels and followed him into the bedroom.

  He untied the belt on his bathrobe and let it drop to the floor. He retrieved the two pillows, one on the floor, the other askew in the middle of the queen-size bed, and arranged them neatly, one on top of the other, centered at the head of the mattress. He tossed aside the rumpled top sheet.

  She said, “Is there wine?”

  When he turned to face her, she was pleased to see that he was already erect. “Out in the living room,” he said. He followed her to the bedroom doorway so that he could see her glide through his apartment. Although she could feel his eyes on her, she moved confidently, her posture tall and straight.

  She saw the half-empty bottle of white on the coffee table, surrounded by three glasses: one empty, two with a few sips left in the bottom. She walked into the kitchen, confident that he would watch her rise on her toes and stretch to get two clean glasses from the top shelf of the cabinet to the left of the sink.

  He watched her come back toward him, the bottle in one hand, the two glasses, crossed at the stems, in the other. She kept her arms at her sides as she walked, knowing how much he appreciated the way her breasts swayed in rhythm with her gait.

  By the time she was at the bed, he was already in position, on his back, his fingers interlaced behind his head on the stacked pillows. She glanced down at his penis to be sure he was ready.

  She placed the two glasses next to each other on the night stand and half-filled each one. She put the bottle down next to the glasses.

  Slowly she sank onto the mattress, swinging one leg over him and settling on her knees. “Are you sure you can—so soon?” she said, the question a casual compliment. She knew the answer.

  Unlacing his fingers and resting his arms at his side, he said, “Come closer and we’ll see.”

  She bent at the waist, lowering her trunk until her palms rested on the mattress on either side of the stacked pillows. She felt his erect penis touch the inside of her left thigh. She pulled the thigh away and watched him smile. Her breasts were three inches above his face.

  He lifted his head, slowly, and she pulled her breasts away. He laughed gently, and she smiled a little bit.

  His hands came up and grazed her hips, his fingers lightly running up her flank and tracing the undersides of her breasts. He heard her begin to sigh.

  His fingers slid down her sides, slowly, across her hips, then inward, toward her sex. She gasped when the fingers began to caress the folds of her vagina. He raised his head and kissed one nipple, and then the other.

  She closed her eyes and reached between his legs, taking his penis and guiding it to her sex. She heard him moan. She held it steady and lowered herself onto it, the both of them beginning to breathe deeply.

  They moved slowly in rhythm for a minute.

  “Now?” she said, opening her eyes to gauge his response. He nodded silently.

&
nbsp; As she untied the loose knot in her yellow and blue silk scarf and removed it from her neck, his hands came up and lightly stroked the underside of each breast.

  She rocked up and down gently, pausing at the top of the movement when only the tip of his penis was inside her. She reached behind her and let the scarf trail across his scrotum.

  “Now.” He opened his eyes and lifted his head off the pillows.

  She stopped rocking to concentrate on the task. She slid the scarf under his neck and adjusted it so that each end was the same length. She noticed his eyes fixed on her breasts as they swayed above his face.

  He moaned softly as she knotted the scarf at the front of his throat and began to tighten it. She started to rock again, feeling his penis get even harder as she tightened the scarf.

  His eyes began to close, his moans of pleasure becoming longer and lower. Steadily she tightened the knot at his throat.

  His moans turned to groans and his hands lifted off the mattress as she pulled at the knot. After a few moments his eyes opened wide, and his hands reached up toward his throat. He appeared to be trying to shout, but he couldn’t produce a sound. His fingers grasped at the scarf, but it was too tight against his throat. His eyelids began to close, as if he were falling asleep. The skin on his cheeks began to pale, then turn a faint blue. His hands fluttered in the air for a moment before falling to the mattress. He was no longer breathing.

  Her face contorted as she pulled hard on the knot one last time, increasing the pressure and maintaining it for several long moments. She felt the bulge of his penis increasing inside her, exciting her more, even though he was now lifeless. Beads of perspiration formed on her upper lip as she rose and fell on his erect penis for another minute, until she climaxed. She paused, the sensation flooding her body.

  She let go of the scarf, placed her hands on the mattress, near his shoulders, and began to rock back and forth again, her breasts almost grazing his still face. She lifted her hips, exposing the tip of his penis, paused, and then fell onto it, violently. She knew this time it would take only a few thrusts. Then, when it was over, she paused, breathing deeply, her eyes closed, her head bowed, letting the pleasure radiate through her body.

  “What you did was wrong, Austin.”

  Gently she lifted herself off him. Standing next to the bed, she looked down at his beautiful, motionless body, his muscular chest and arms, the slim waist, and that wonderful, hard penis.

  She untied the knot in the scarf and removed it from around his neck. She stroked the silk, trying to remove its creases. She tied the scarf loosely around her neck and walked over to the dresser with the mirror on top, leaning against the wall. Looking at her image, she smoothed the scarf again and, satisfied, walked into the living room, where she put her clothes back on: the panties, the blouse, the skirt, and the shoes.

  She walked over to the coffee table, bent down, and with her forearm swept all the glasses onto the soiled grey carpet. They didn’t break. She crushed one of them under her heel. Then she walked into the kitchen and swept the soiled dishes off the counter and onto the linoleum floor, where they broke with a satisfyingly clatter.

  She went back into the living room and kicked the coffee table over, then lifted a dinette chair and swung it, shattering the table’s glass top. She worked her way methodically across the small living room, upending, knocking over, and breaking every object in her path.

  She was breathing heavily now from her exertions. She picked up her jacket from the floor and put it on, retrieved her purse from the small table near the door, and paused. She walked back into the kitchen and grabbed a paper napkin from the counter. She went to the door and rubbed the napkin across the knob twice as she left the apartment. She pulled the door shut and wiped the knob on the outside, and then put the napkin in her purse. She glanced down at the four other units in the brick building. There were no lights on in the unit next door. She walked at a moderate pace toward her car, which she had parked a block away.

  Chapter 1

  I’d gotten the call from headquarters a little before seven, which was twenty minutes before I was hoping to wake up. According to the sergeant, the body of a young man was lying on a bed in a shitty little apartment in a rundown five-unit brick building on a mixed commercial/residential block near campus. He was on his back, completely nude, with a huge erection. The death looked suspicious, the sergeant reported. I was curious.

  The yellow tape was already up when I got there at seven-twenty. The edge of the sun was just visible, a yellow-pink smudge in the east against a pale blue sky. It was forty-five degrees. By five this afternoon, it would climb another twenty degrees. Spring is my favorite time here in the middle of Montana. In late April, you’ll still wake up to frost, but you get a definite feeling the worst is over, that the plants and trees had somehow made it through another ungodly winter, that things would start to grow, that life would go on.

  Not for the poor bastard in the apartment, of course, him lying there nude, mast up.

  I have mixed feelings about starting a new case. I don’t like it that someone got killed, of course, especially a young person. I’m a cop, but I’m still a person. More cop than person at this particular stage of my life, but still technically a person. On the other hand, I didn’t miss the presentations to junior-high kids about why they shouldn’t pop Mommy’s Percocet.

  The cars in front of the brick building told me who was already at the crime scene. The blue Mitsubishi belongs to my partner, Ryan Miner. Ryan is a handsome, well-adjusted, happily married father of two point five kids. He’s been my partner for more than a year, which here in Rawlings has worked out to four or five murders. I’ve tried as hard as I can to dislike Ryan because he represents everything that I hate. Not the Mormon part. I don’t give a crap how you try to figure out the Big Picture, or if you even try. That’s your business.

  It’s that he is a superb detective: smart, strong, cheerful, totally committed to the job. Earlier this year, this asshole took a shot at us. Ryan pushed me out of the way and took the bullet himself. It ripped up his intestine pretty bad, and for a few days he was pretty close to checking out because the rest of your body apparently doesn’t like it when all the shit leaks out of your large intestine. But the doctors blasted him with weapons-grade antibiotics, removed the torn-up part of the intestine and sewed the two ends together, and hooked him up to a colostomy bag while the whole thing healed.

  After a couple months they stitched his plumbing back together and he was healing pretty fast, being young and otherwise healthy, but then he screwed it up by pushing too hard. He used to be a big-deal athlete in college, and he could Krav Maga a guy onto the ground before I could get my pistol out of the holster. I think he was surprised and a little offended when that bullet didn’t just bounce off him, so he started back into training before his doc okayed it and ended up ripping his gut, which set him back a few weeks. Now he’s got this cane that his doc makes him carry around to remind him he almost goddamn died, so maybe he should try harder not to be an idiot by re-injuring himself more often than necessary.

  The first few weeks after he was shot, after they got his infection under control, the scary part was he couldn’t remember people’s names and had trouble thinking of the right word. But he’s at about eighty percent of his old self now, which puts him at about a hundred-and-fifty percent of me. He sets the bar so high I just walk under it. Don’t even have to bend.

  The busted, rusted minivan belongs to Harold Breen, our Medical Examiner. I love Harold. He’s morbidly obese, with a perpetually sweaty scalp, stubble in his chin folds, and a belly sticking out of his plaid K-Mart polyester sport shirt because the bottom button popped off the first time he put it on. Harold has been with the department almost twenty years, longer than me. I don’t believe he’s ever blown an autopsy, screwed-up a court appearance, or gotten pissed at an alcoholic detective because she contaminated a body. And he never forgets that the stiff on the steel table used to be lim
ber.

  The 1968 Beetle, hand-painted in swirly black and white like a Holstein cow, belongs to Robin, our Evidence Tech. She’s been with us four or five years. Those years have transformed her from a tall, freckled, strong-boned athlete with baby fat to a tall, freckled, strong-boned athlete without baby fat. She wears all kinds of jeweled hardware on her face—in her nose, up and down her ears, in her eyebrows. She frequently changes the color of the streaks in her blond hair, the only rule being that the color must not appear in nature. She curses more than me, which requires significant effort, and effortlessly drops the word pubes into quite a few sentences that would have been perfectly fine without it.

  “Enjoy,” said Officer Truman, opening the cheap wooden door with a metal “5” screwed into it. Right away I was hit by a funky smell, equal parts cheap white wine and hard sex. My gaze swept the room. The dead guy was a worse housekeeper than me. Scattered across the floor were busted glasses, dishes, framed pictures, and all kinds of books, wooden drawers, throw pillows, lamps, chair cushions, and a stereo, a TV set, a pizza box, and a few broken wine bottles. A glass-topped coffee table was on its side, one of the four legs snapped off, the glass in a thousand pieces on the grey-brown carpet. To tidy up, you’d start with a snow shovel.

  Robin or one of the uniforms had already laid down the metal plates that we walk across at a crime scene. You see them more outside than inside, but the living room was so full of busted crap that Robin hadn’t had a chance to tag and bag it all. I hop-scotched across the plates toward the bedroom. From its doorway I saw Ryan’s broad back and Harold’s broad front.

  Ryan was standing by the side of the bed, hands on his skinny hips, his cane hooked on his wrist, the tip dangling in the air. As usual, he was wearing a real nice suit, dark, with a bright white shirt, button down. Today’s tie was striped, some reds and a blue. He turned when he heard me. “Good morning, Karen,” he said.

  I nodded. “Still a little early to call it that,” I said, “but, okay, good morning.”