Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Page 31

  There wasn’t one specific thing I did that got her killed. But all along I knew it was possible that Brian would hurt her. I knew it, because I’ve known too many guys like him, and too many girls like her. But I couldn’t stop it. I had to work the case. It wasn’t my fault. Ryan said so, and the chief did, too. Even Brian Hawser never accused me of getting Tiffany killed. Still, I’m having some real trouble getting past it.

  All the betrayals and infidelities—all this lying and fucking—and what did it get anyone? It killed three of them, put another two in jail, and ruined a bunch of other lives. Suzannah left two kids behind, a healthy daughter and a sick son, neither of whom did anything to deserve the heartache they were going to face. The way these things usually work out, the two kids will end up paying the heaviest price. Adam probably won’t understand why his mother and Austin were gone. He’ll feel bad about it, but maybe he won’t feel responsible for any of it. And the daughter? Aaron Montgomery will need to explain things to her.

  My head sees all this destruction as the routine wreckage that happens when you do shit so obviously stupid you really can’t explain afterwards what you were thinking—if you were thinking anything at all. Most of it comes down to breaking a trust. Sometimes it’s hurting yourself by doing something unworthy of the person you already are or the person you have the potential to be. I’ve cut myself with that particular blade often enough to know how bad it hurts, and that the scars never disappear.

  I’m trying hard to see how, behind all this misery, there’s something positive. I’d like to believe that the one thing that runs through all these bad decisions is a human longing for connection and tenderness and love. I know it’s hard to see it that way when most of what these characters did was selfish and cruel. But if you could ask everyone involved in this case whether they would have done any of the horrible things they did if they could have had just one person they could trust and love—and would love them—well, I’d like to believe I know how they would respond. I know how I would.

  I looked down at the key on my coffee table. The key was on top of a note Mac had left me this morning. The test results were back on his wife, he had written. It was Stage III ovarian cancer, and she was coming apart. I thought a good long while about his decision before I reached for the glass of Jack Daniel’s on the coffee table.

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  The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Series

  To sample or buy any of these titles, visit Mike Markel’s page on Amazon.

  Visit MikeMarkel.com.

  BIG SICK HEART (Book 1)

  Bad decisions have finally caught up with police detective Karen Seagate. Her drinking has destroyed her marriage and hurt her job performance, and the chief is looking for any excuse to fire her. Still, she and her new partner, a young Mormon guy who seems to have arrived from another century or another planet, intend to track down whoever killed Arlen Hagerty, the corrupt leader of Soul Savers. Clawing his way to the top, Hagerty created plenty of enemies, including his wife, his mistress, his debate partner, the organization’s founder, and the politician he was blackmailing. When Seagate causes a car crash that sends a young girl to Intensive Care, the chief thinks he finally has his opportunity. But even the chief can’t believe what Seagate does when she finally catches the killer.

  DEVIATIONS (Book 2)

  Former police detective Karen Seagate is drinking herself to oblivion and having dangerous sex with losers from the bar when the new police chief tracks her down. The brutal rape and murder of a state senator by a lone-wolf extremist gives Seagate a chance to return to the department, but the new chief has set down some rules, and Seagate is not good with rules. At this point, she is just trying to stay alive. With nothing left to lose and nobody left to trust—not even her partner, Ryan—Seagate goes off the grid to find the killer. She doesn’t care that she will be fired again. She has much bigger problems, now that she has been captured inside the neo-Nazi compound.

  THE BROKEN SAINT (Book 3)

  Seagate and Miner investigate the murder of Maricel Salizar, a young Filipino exchange student at Central Montana State. The most obvious suspect is her boyfriend, who happens to have gang connections. And then there’s Amber, a fellow student who’s obviously incensed at Maricel for a sexual indiscretion involving Amber’s boyfriend. But the evidence keeps leading Seagate and Miner back to the professor, an LDS bishop who hosted her in his dysfunctional home. Seagate takes it in stride that the professor can’t seem to tell the truth about his relationship with the victim, but her devout partner, Ryan Miner, believes that a high-ranking fellow Mormon who violates a sacred trust deserves special punishment.

  THREE-WAYS (Book 4)

  When grad student Austin Sulenka is found strangled, nude on his bed, the first question for Seagate and Miner is whether it was an auto-asphyxiation episode gone bad. Evidence strewn around his small apartment suggests that he spent his last night with at least different women. Each of them and their other partners had motives to kill the philandering graduate student. As Seagate and her partner try to unravel the complicated couplings, she finds herself in a three-way relationship that threatens to destroy her own fragile sobriety.

  FRACTURES (Book 5)

  The fracking boom in eastern Montana has minted a handful of new millionaires and one billionaire: Lee Rossman, the president of Rossman Mining and the leading philanthropist in the small city of Rawlings. Rossman is the last person Detectives Seagate and Miner expected to discover dead in the alley next to a strip club. Later, when Lee’s son is found out at the rigs, with significant internal injuries, numerous broken bones, and a belly full of fracking liquid, the detectives know the two crimes are related but can’t figure out how. Seagate and Miner must try to solve a mystery awash in enormous fortunes, thwarted ambitions, and grudges both old and new.

  THE REVEAL (Book 6)

  Many citizens in the small college town of Rawlings, Montana, are unsurprised to learn that Virginia Rinaldi, the world-famous sociologist, was murdered. A few are secretly pleased. Her political enemies knew her as an ideologue who used insults, threats, and blackmail to promote her unpopular social views. When Detectives Seagate and Miner begin their investigation, they discover that a local prostitute had recently moved into the professor’s house, angering Rinaldi’s college-age son. And when the community learns that the prostitute made a lesbian porn video with one of Rinaldi’s students, tensions on campus erupt, leading to more bloodshed. Drawn into a horrifying world of sexual violence and exploitation, Seagate devises a plan to flush out the killer. The plan appears to be on track—until Seagate unwittingly jeopardizes the life of her partner, Ryan Miner.

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  About the Author

  Mike Markel is the author of 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)

  He lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife.

  Thank you for taking time to read Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend.

  MikeMarkel.com

  Fractures : Prologue

  Following is the Prologue of Fractures, Book 5 in the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series.

  Lee Rossman shut off the lights as he exited the reception area of his office in the New Century Building, locked the door behind him, and walked down the carpeted hall toward the elevator. He picked up the faint sounds of Mexican pop music drifting into the hall from the open door of the title-company office a few steps farther along. As he stepped around the cleaning cart that protruded into the hall, he glanced inside but didn’t see anyone. He would have said hello. He was comfortable with Hispanics from his years in Houston. And he mixed easily with people who came from nothing, peop
le like himself.

  The elevator, smooth and almost silent, delivered him to the basement parking garage. The click of his leather soles on the concrete floor echoed in the silent garage. There were only eight or nine cars left. He recognized a midnight blue Lexus, a dark green Jaguar, and a silver Audi that always seemed to be there when he arrived every morning around seven and were still there when he left, usually twelve or fourteen hours later. As he walked toward his BMW 7 series in parking spot 96, he glanced at his watch: 9:25.

  He often thought of what his father had told him, his father who quit high school to work the oil fields for two bucks an hour: you got time or you got money. Nobody’s got both.

  He tossed his wool topcoat onto the passenger seat and started the BMW, the running lights throwing two white circles on the grey concrete wall, just below “Rossman Mining” painted in maroon letters four inches high. He had been so successful for so many years he no longer thought about how far he had come in his forty-year career.

  Lee Rossman eased the car toward the exit, tripping the steel gate, which clanged and shuddered as it rose. He saw the blue light flash and heard the buzzer sound out on the sidewalk as he steered the car onto Main Street. The red and green Christmas lights on the light poles swayed in the wind. After dark here in central Montana, when the gusts picked up, the squat old brick and stone commercial buildings provided some intermittent windbreak, but when he crossed a side street he would hear a muffled whoosh and feel his heavy BMW tilt for a moment as the wind barreled through the tiny commercial center of Rawlings.

  He drove six blocks, past the holiday lights and decorations on the stores and offices, now closed for the night. He passed a handful of people huddled in their heavy coats, hunched over in the frigid night air. A digital sign on the bank display read 3 degrees. The movie theatre, its bright bulbs illuminating the lobby posters and the V-shaped white marquee extending out over the sidewalk, offered the only attraction in the frozen purple night.

  Lee Rossman turned left on Harrison and drove slowly toward the grittier section of downtown, where the storefronts cowered behind steel accordion gates. He slowed down as he approached Johnny’s Lounge and put on his blinker. Above the gouged, dirty wooden door, the bar’s name was spelled out in cursive letters, garish blue and red neon. To the left of the name was a huge neon top hat; to the right, a giant cocktail glass, tilted slightly.

  From the door emerged a tall, thin young guy wearing matching denim jeans and jacket and a white cowboy hat. He pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and, cupping his hands, lit it with a butane lighter.

  Sizing up the young man’s clothing, Lee Rossman concluded he wouldn’t be walking, certainly not more than a few steps. The young man moved slowly and deliberately, concentrating on his boots on the sidewalk, as if he were rehearsing walking a straight line in case he got stopped by the police. Rossman scanned the line of parked cars and pickups, trying to guess which one belonged to the young man, before settling on a new black F-150, its sides streaked with mud.

  The young man stepped off the curb, momentarily losing his balance, and steadied himself on the hood of the black pickup. Lee Rossman smiled as the young man walked over to the driver’s door and struggled to retrieve his keys from the pockets of his tight jeans. He was a roughneck, out on the town in his new denim and his new truck.

  Rossman pulled up behind the truck and waited for the young man to turn over the big block engine. The pickup shook and let out a rumble, and the young man pulled slowly out of the parking spot and drove off.

  Rossman carefully parked his BMW in the empty spot thirty feet from the entrance to Johnny’s Lounge. He let the engine idle for a few moments, his fingers gripping the heated leather steering wheel. Warm air blasted from the vents on either side of the wheel, filling the cabin. He felt the warmth from the leather seat penetrating his wool slacks, which were designed in London and tailored in Hong Kong but never intended to be worn in Rawlings, Montana, in late November.

  What did it mean, Lee Rossman thought, that he was summoned here? At nine-thirty at night?

  He shut down the engine and cupped his palms over the heat vents. He looked up to see two girls in their mid-twenties walk up to the heavy wooden door at Johnny’s Lounge. They were wearing thick down jackets, blue jeans with rhinestones on the back pockets, and cowboy boots with two-inch heels that had never touched a stirrup. One of the girls pulled at the door, then flashed a big smile as a beefy guy, dim in the shadows inside the bar, helped them pull it open.

  Lee Rossman didn’t recognize these girls, but he knew they were at Johnny’s for the first shift. Until about midnight, there was live music from a country band that had both a male and a female singer and therefore could play any of the popular songs on the two country radio stations in town. Some of the girls on the first shift were there for the line dancing, some for the free drinks from any of a couple of dozen guys who walked in with two or three crisp hundred-dollar bills in their jeans pockets and left without a penny. After midnight—after the girls in denim and cowboy boots had selected their guys and left—another set of girls started to work the pole on the platform behind the bar, and the professionals in tight skirts started to work the guys who weren’t there for the line dancing.

  He got out of his BMW and slipped into his topcoat. He slid his hands deep into the coat pockets and walked toward the bar. As he was passing the battered door, it opened and a couple came out. He felt the vibration from the bass guitar. He heard the crack of the snare drum, as sharp as a gunshot, and the metallic tinkling of women’s voices competing with the amplified music. He felt the humidity coming off the young bodies inside and smelled the spilled beer and the cheap, sweet perfume mingled with sweat.

  Lee Rossman said “Excuse me” as the young couple, laughing and oblivious to the old man in the charcoal wool topcoat, stumbled into him. He kept walking, past the window with the neon Coors sign, toward the spot where he had been instructed to appear. He turned into the alley that ran along the wall of Johnny’s Lounge. He walked toward the floodlight mounted above the two heavy steel doors in the pavement that led down to the basement, where the bar took its deliveries. He stood there, as he had been directed.

  It took him some time to make out the objects in the alley outside the cone of light in which he stood. The moon was hidden behind fast-rushing clouds, and there were no other lights to push back the darkness. On one side of the steel doors were a dozen empty beer kegs lined up alongside the concrete-block wall. On the other side were three wooden shipping pallets stacked against the wall, and a big green dumpster on wheels, with trash and cardboard boxes pushing open its lid. Across the alley he saw a three-story brick building, probably a hundred years old, with ornamental stone-framed windows now bricked in, a vestige of a time when the alley was a through street.

  Lee Rossman felt the cold penetrating the soles of his shoes. He glanced down at his feet. The alley, its surface rippled, broken, and patched in various shades of grey and black, was covered with dirty ice, crushed paper beer cups, broken glass, cigarette butts, and condom wrappers. Off to the side he saw a frozen starburst of vomit. He caught a faint smell of urine.

  He stood there, under the light in the alley next to Johnny’s Lounge, waiting as he had been instructed. He glanced to his right when he heard footsteps.

  They looked at each other for a long moment. “Why here?” Lee Rossman said.

  His killer did not respond.

  “You owe me an explanation,” Rossman said.

  The killer paused. “You don’t want to talk about what we owe each other.”

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “I want your answer.”

  “I considered what you said.”

  “And are you done considering?”

  “Yes.” His tone was strong but full of regret. “I am.”

  “What is your decision?”

  “My answer is no. I will not do it.”

  His killer was silen
t.

  “I’m going to go now,” Lee Rossman said. “I expect you not to mention this to me again. Ever.” He started to turn.

  “You know it’s the only way.”

  He stopped and turned to face his killer. “There’s always another way.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve made the wrong decision, Lee,” his killer said and walked toward him.

  Lee Rossman did not realize what was happening when the killer pushed aside his open topcoat. Only when he felt the knife slide into his abdomen and the pain radiate out in all directions like electric charges did he understand.

  His eyes were open wide in disbelief. His knees began to buckle, and then he sank to the pavement, his head hitting hard and coming to rest near a patch of ice in which a candy wrapper was frozen.

  The killer bent down and reached into Lee Rossman’s inside suit jacket pocket and removed his wallet, then lifted the velvet cuff of his jacket sleeve, unbuckled the clasp on the heavy gold watch, slipped it off his wrist, and let his arm fall to the pavement. Lee Rossman appeared to be breathing, but his skin was beginning to pale and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. The killer turned to walk away, then stopped and returned and, pushing Rossman’s topcoat and suit jacket aside, lowered the zipper on his impeccably tailored black wool slacks.