Deviations Page 15

  “He’s not going to believe the department’s sending two detectives out for a day to talk about flyers.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But it’ll give us a chance to look around, see if anything jumps out at us, and send him a signal we’re thinking about his organization.”

  “If BC is part of his group, Christopher Barry might reach out to him, and he might contact Fredericks.”

  “Sure. We spend all our time trying to work through the university to get to a professor,” I said, “who knows what other shit this BC guy could be up to right now? If BC hits someone else here in Rawlings, and all we’ve got to show is that we’ve been interviewing the professor, could look like we’re not really being all that proactive.”

  “Want to run it by Nick?”

  * * * *

  “Chief, we’re trying to reach Nick about the Weston case. I can’t get him on his cell. He tell you where he is?”

  The chief looked up from his desk, then checked his watch. “Nick’s out on an assignment.”

  “Any way we can reach him? We wanted to get his okay on another way to get to this guy BC while we think about bringing it to the prosecutor.”

  “Nick could be gone for a day or two. Maybe I can help you with it?”

  “Okay,” I said. The chief was into Almost Answers. You’d ask him a direct question, he’d almost answer it. You ask, You ever go fishing, Chief? He’d say, I enjoy many sports. “I don’t know how close you’re following the Weston case, but we’ve got some emails between this Willson Fredericks and somebody named BC, who appears to be a low-level patriot thug. They’re talking about operations.”

  “Yes, Nick’s kept me apprised.”

  “Okay. Fredericks is denying that he wrote those emails, so one option is to get the federal prosecutor to force him to tell us who this BC is.”

  “I’m working on setting up a meeting with the prosecutor. What’s your other way to get to BC that you want to talk to Nick about?”

  Ryan said, “We’re thinking that whoever BC is, he’s probably nearby. We thought we’d go out to Lake Hollow and talk with the guy who runs the Montana Patriot Front.”

  The chief shifted in his chair. “You have anything points to Christopher Barry being involved in the Weston case?”

  I was surprised that he knew Barry’s name. Nick really was keeping the chief up-to-date. “No,” I said. “But if we just went out there to talk with Barry, shake his tree a little, who knows what might fall off?”

  The chief frowned, shaking his head. “No, too risky.”

  “What’s the risk?” I said.

  “I want to keep a lid on the patriot connection,” the chief said. “I’ve made it a point not to release any information about the 1488 on Weston’s chest. When we get whoever did this, we’ll know it’s him because he’ll be so proud of it we won’t be able to shut him up. Then we’ll have him on federal charges and he’ll get the needle. We tell Christopher Barry, he starts putting the word out, that could scare the murderer, make him go underground. It’ll give him time to think about whether he wants to die for his crime—and he might decide not to.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What do you want us to do, then, while we wait for you or Nick to get back to us?”

  “Just hang tight,” the chief said.

  “Hang tight?”

  “That’s what I said. If you need something to do, see if you can track down those operations mentioned in the emails. Read more of Willson Fredericks’ articles, check out the patriot group propaganda if you want. But don’t go to the university, don’t go to Lake Hollow.”

  “All right, Chief,” I said. “Thanks.”

  * * * *

  “Look at me, Ryan.” I was leaning back in my chair, fingers laced behind my head, feet up on my desk. “Would you say I’m hanging tight?”

  He smiled at me. “I don’t know, Karen. Looks more like you’re hanging loose.”

  “I think I’m just hanging around.”

  “Are you making a comment about the chief’s telling us to hang tight?”

  “You think, maybe?”

  “Listen, Karen, things have changed a little here since the old chief left.”

  “Yeah, I get that. The old chief, as long as I didn’t make him stay after five or pull him off surveillance detail at the tittie bars, he was good with whatever the hell I did. He thought I was a crazy drunk; I thought he was a corrupt, lazy, incompetent son of a bitch. You know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying you understood each other?”

  “Exactly. But I have no idea what’s going on here now. Corelli’s the federal guy with all the experience and all the authority, but when we go to him to get his permission to do something, he’s not around. And he doesn’t pick up his damn phone. What the hell kind of FBI guy doesn’t pick up his damn phone?”

  “That kind, I guess,” Ryan said, smiling gently at me. That’s one of the many good things about Ryan: because he has about thirty or forty sisters, he’s had a lot of experience dealing with screwed-up women.

  “Corelli’s off somewhere getting a mani-pedi, so we ask the chief for authorization to, you know, solve this damn case, and he tells us no, I don’t think that would be appropriate, no, we don’t want to move too fast, no, we don’t want to hurt the professor’s feelings, no, the Nazis are very sensitive people, too. The guy who smashed in Weston’s head and raped her, I’m sure he was just having a stressful day and he didn’t really mean to do it. For the love of Christ, am I the only man left on this damn police force? I feel like going into his office and appraising him—”

  “Apprising him.”

  “I’m so sorry, miss, did I just use the wrong fucking word?”

  “Well, you did just now,” Ryan said, cheerfully.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?”

  “I think we were told to find out if any bad things happened to good people on the dates mentioned in the emails and read some more of the professor’s articles. In general, hang tight.”

  “You’re good drinking the Kool-Aid, aren’t you?”

  “I like to stay hydrated. Besides, since my checks are signed by the Rawlings Police Department, I think it’s smart to do what I’m told—you know, all other things being equal.”

  “You’re quite an ordinary young man, you know that?”

  “Sticks and stones, Karen.” He smiled his big grin.

  I didn’t realize how much I missed him when I was gone. I think he gets me.

  Chapter 14

  “Anything new?” Ryan said.

  “Give me one more second.” I was reading Weston’s autopsy report. The ME wrote excellent reports, complete with a couple of paragraphs in English at the top.

  “Nope, it’s almost exactly what Harold told us when we were downstairs with him. Blunt force trauma, massive intracranial bleeding caused swelling that compressed the brain stem, shutting down all her systems. Before she met the guy with the brick or the rock,” I said, “she was a very healthy woman of fifty-nine. Her organs were clean, he writes. Would have lived a good thirty more years, he says. And one more thing: from looking at the skull fragments, he concluded that when the object hit her skull it was coming in on a slight downward trajectory. More damage to the front side than the back side, so he was right-handed.”

  “So,” Ryan said, “the guy was right-handed, taller than she was?”

  “I guess, or maybe he had punched her in the face, and she was doubled over when he hit her.”

  “Basically, then,” Ryan said, “Harold’s report doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

  “Not one damn thing.” I dropped the report onto my desk. “Shit.”

  “Hey, Karen, we felt the same way when we started out on the Hagerty case, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said. “But at least that one we had some biologicals under Hagerty’s fingernails.” I picked up my phone and punched in Robin’s number, then hit Speaker. “Hey, Robin, this is Ka
ren. You got some great news for me on Dolores Weston?”

  “I was just writing this up for you. I don’t have shit on Weston.”

  “You finished typing the DNA on the semen?”

  “Yeah, just finished it. It’s not in any database—not Montana, not federal. Checked NDIS and CODIS. The guy’s got no record of violent crime.”

  “No defensive wounds?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fibers, blood, anything?”

  “When I said ‘I don’t have shit on Weston,’ I meant that to include DNA, fibers, blood, and anything.”

  “You call yourself an evidence tech?”

  “I try not to, actually. Spooks the guys. Really, Karen, I’ve got nothing. No tire tracks, no footprints, no fibers, no biologicals. All I’ve got is those four buttons from her blouse. A partial print of Weston’s on one of the buttons, but nobody else’s prints since our nobody else just ripped open her blouse without touching the buttons.”

  “You can’t get anything off the blouse where the guy ripped it?”

  “Yes, Karen, I thought you’d enjoy it if I delayed telling you until the end of our chat. We got his prints off the silk blouse, ran him through the computer this morning, he works down at Nazis“R”Us, we arrested him a few minutes ago. He’s in lockup. He confessed; he’s scheduled for execution after lunch.”

  “Thanks, Robin. Always a pleasure.”

  “Later, Karen.”

  I hung up the phone. “Where you headed?” I said. Ryan was getting up from his desk.

  “I’ve got a presentation out at Bishop Halloran.”

  “Career Day?”

  “Meth and huffing.”

  “Have a great old time. See you later.”

  “You bet.”

  I’d headed up enough investigations to know that Ryan was right saying it was too early to get bummed out. After the initial buzz of starting a murder investigation—doing the canvass, the autopsy, the forensics, drawing up a preliminary list of suspects, devising a strategy, figuring out the resources you’ll need, making the personnel assignments—you often hit a wall. Or a better word would be you run into some bog. You get stuck in some wet, oozy stuff, and your wheels just sink in. No matter how hard you hit the accelerator, the damn car won’t budge. In fact, the harder you hit it, the deeper you sink in. We were sinking into the bog.

  The slime had made it up to the wheel wells. Day after the murder, the department had put out a call on TV and radio for information about any suspicious activities near the industrial park where Weston’s body was recovered. Even though the state had offered ten thousand bucks for information leading to an arrest, we hadn’t gotten anything useful. Unless you consider it useful to know that seventy-three people thought it worth a shot to finger their husbands/boyfriends/fathers/sons, and, in one case, their mom, on the chance that they’d be arrested for killing Weston. It was all bullshit, of course, but what are you going to do? Ten thousand is a lot of cash. The good news, I guess, is that only fourteen of the callers were certain that their people had killed Weston. The rest were just calling out of, you know, civic duty.

  So the canvass got us nothing, which made sense since there weren’t any houses within a couple hundred yards of where the body was recovered. Add the nothing we had from Weston’s house and we officially had nothing. Nothing from the autopsy, and nothing from forensics. The only remaining tests were the tox screens, which would take another couple of days. But we weren’t expecting anything from the blood.

  All we had was the emails from the professor, who probably was getting his pebbles off by pretending to be Nazi-compatible. Then there were my two wet, oozy bosses. Agent Nick Corelli was working real hard on the case right here in Rawlings—except, of course, that we didn’t know where he was or what he was doing or how to get in touch with him or maybe I was trying to get off the booze too quick and I was just hallucinating that there was a Nick Corelli. And the chief, who trusted me and appreciated my work and thought I’d have a terrific future serving the citizens of Rawlings—no, wait a second, now I’m definitely hallucinating.

  I’m just supposed to hang tight. Right around now, I’d rather just be tight.

  But something would break. If I could stay patient, something would turn up, something would happen. We’d get a court order to force Willson Fredericks to talk. The prosecutor would put his stones in a vise, make like he was going to tighten it, and we’d have BC’s name, address, and Social Security in ten seconds. We’d pick him up, and he’d start confessing, right in the back seat of a big Ford, about how he was proud of what he did, he’d do it all over again, he’s the only real American, Heil Hitler, game over. Or we’d get a call from some woman whose shitty husband or boyfriend is a disappointment not just because he drinks, whores around, and beats her up occasionally but due to that weird, boozy story he told her about bashing this senator’s skull in and carving 1488 on her fucking chest, which she certainly deserved. He wouldn’t tell her about the rape, of course, because women always get hung up on details, missing the big picture, which is that he’s a real hero.

  Yes, something would break. Unless it didn’t. Nine times out of ten we hand the murderer over to the prosecutor, but what if Dolores Weston’s case is that one time out of ten? What if we do everything right—I stay sober, Ryan stays Ryan, we figure out a way to work with Corelli and the chief—and we still don’t find him? Well, what if? It could happen. It would be real bad, but it could happen.

  * * * *

  “Jorge, Karen Seagate.” I was phoning our IT guy.

  “Hey, mi hermana. Welcome back.”

  “Thanks, Jorge. You got a second?”

  “For you, of course.”

  “When you went out to the university with Nick Corelli the other day—you know, to grab the professor’s email?—did you get a chance to check the routing information on those emails from the guy named BC? You know what I’m talking about?”

  “I know what routing information is, but I didn’t go out to the university the other day. And this guy Corelli, never heard of him.”

  “I’m sorry, Jorge, I thought he mentioned you two went out to the university. Could there be anyone else in the Department might’ve gone out there with him? You got anyone else in IT since I been gone?”

  “It’s just me, Karen.”

  “Okay, Jorge, sorry to bother you.”

  I wrote out a note for Ryan, telling him I’m sick and headed home. Which was largely true.

  * * * *

  Dear Mamma-

  Let me start by apologizing for not staying in touch better. I should have called you more. I could say I’ve been busy, but that’s not really true. I’ve been busy the last few days, but not at all before that. The department has a new chief and he re-hired me. Not exactly sure why. But I’m on a case now. I’m back with that Mormon kid, Ryan, who I think I mentioned, so not everything is new.

  You’re reading this because I’m working on a case that looks like it might get kind of complicated. I might not get a chance to call for a while.

  I want to say some things that I haven’t been able to say to you on the phone. Sometimes you sound a little blurry and tired when we do talk. I know I feel that a lot, too. So I’m going to try to say them here now.

  I do love you. I know I don’t say that. I have many memories of having told you other things, things that were very hurtful. I hope you can understand that was about me, not about you. Are you able to understand that? I hope you are.

  When your problems began, I wasn’t in a good enough place to see what was happening to you. I just wasn’t together enough to think about you as a person going through that shit, with what happened to Kathy, then Dad leaving. I like to tell myself it was that I was just a screwed up teenager—you know, insecure about what I looked like, what with the no boobs and all. I know that a lot of the girls my age were into themselves, too. I like to think it was a phase I was going through, that I’m a little less about myself now. But someone
looking at how I’ve treated you since I left for college, that person would think the way I treated you was because that was the person I was. The person I was then, and still the same person now. If I’m being honest, that’s what I’d have to say.

  What happened to you scared me. You weren’t good at hiding how it hurt you. I know you wanted to, but I could see that the only way to keep it from hurting was to not feel anything. I understand now how that works. It scared me so bad, how you could get so hurt by those things coming at you. So I did what a selfish person does. I pushed you away. You couldn’t help me anymore, so it was the only way to keep it from hurting me too.

  It didn’t work, at least the part about keeping it from hurting me. I thought about you all the time. Does the fact that it hurt me say something good about me? I was cruel to you and said things to you that make me cry even today when I think of them. I tried to forget about you, but I never did.

  I know you did the best you could. The things that knocked you down, I couldn’t have handled them. The things that have happened to me weren’t as bad. Kathy disappearing like that—I think I would have died. I know I would have wanted to.

  What I’ve done—the things I do even now—I don’t take care of myself. I’ve picked up some very bad habits. And that’s what I want to say in this letter. You have to know that about the way I’ve treated you. It was about me, not about you. I love you, Momma. I always loved you.

  But I am ashamed of myself. I couldn’t let you get any closer to me, let you see what I have become, what I am. I let you down, and I didn’t want you to be hurt one more time. I couldn’t take the chance that you would blame yourself.

  You need to know that I love you. As weak and busted up as I am, I love you. And if you are able to pray, I ask you to pray for your little girl, who still needs you and always will.

  Karen

  I folded the letter and placed it in an envelope. I wrote Eleanor Hamilton on the envelope and slipped it between the salt and pepper shakers.