Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For (33 page)

Jackson drove back up the interstate toward Eugene and tried to plan his next move. Without more information, he felt stumped. He called Evans, who answered immediately. “Jackson, give me two minutes and I’ll call you right back.” Her voice held an edge of excitement and Jackson picked up the vibe. He drummed the steering wheel while he waited for her to call. The only other vehicles on the road were a convoy of semis heading south. As they passed, a massive wind rocked his car. Jackson stopped drumming and held on.

When Evans called back she said, “I just talked to one of Bodehammer’s coworkers, a guy named Mason. He says Bodehammer liked to drive up to Skinner’s Butte. He says Bodehammer camped out up there a few times last summer, even though it’s illegal.”

“Good work, Evans. Are you headed to the butte now?”

“I’m just getting into my car.” He heard the car door slam shut, then she continued, “I talked to several employees here at the Goodwill and no one else seemed to know much about Bodehammer, except that he’s a neat freak.”

“Call in some help. Let’s get a dozen patrol cops up there searching. We’re looking for a dark blue cargo van, a campsite, and maybe a dead body.”

“Are you headed to the butte?”

“Unless I hear something better from one of the guys.”

Next Jackson called Ted Conner, hoping to ask him if he’d heard from Jamie. Conner didn’t pick up. Jackson simply asked him to call back. No point in rubbing salt in the man’s wound by reminding him that his daughter was missing. His next call went to Quince. “What have you got for me?” Jackson skipped the pleasantries.

“Not a damn thing. So far none of these photos match any missing women in the database.”

“Did McCray make it back?”

“Not yet.”

“Evans and I are headed up to Skinner’s Butte. A co-worker said Bodehammer likes it up there. Even camps out sometimes.”

“Should I head up there too?”

“How many pictures left to compare?”

“Two.”

“Stay with that for now. Evans is calling in patrol units to search the butte.”

Jackson hung up and speed-dialed Schak. The line was busy, so he flipped the phone closed. He had just passed the turnoff to Lane Community College and the first Eugene exit was next. As he rolled off the freeway and onto Franklin Boulevard, he tried Schak again. Still busy. Damn. He wanted to know what the situation was at the house on Pondview. Scott had seemed to think his brother would go there.
If
Ryan was still in town. It made sense to Jackson as well. He was tempted to cruise out to west Eugene first, but from downtown the butte was much closer. Jackson vacillated. Schak was competent and thorough and Jackson trusted him to do his job. He would hear from his partner any moment. Jackson made a right at Pearl Street and headed for the park entrance.

Ryan gunned the van, flying down the curvy road in near blackness. He almost missed the hairpin turn and forced himself to slow down. Anxiety crawled through his veins like an army of angry ants. The orderly life he had constructed for himself—after his repulsive chaotic stint in jail—had crumbled and there was nothing left to salvage. A cop was sitting in front of his apartment so he couldn’t go home, and he’d missed two days of work without calling in so he couldn’t go back there either. Even his old family home wasn’t right anymore. Without Dad, it was just a crappy little house with no heat.

Ryan thought about Jamie and let out a harsh laugh. The life he’d imagined with her was just a bullshit dream. Another one of his fantasies. His diseased mind was trying to create a reality that was better than his actual experience. He’d been to enough counselors to know the fancy terminology, but as Dad always said, he just wasn’t right in the head. Except right now, he was having a very lucid moment. Ryan hoped it would last long enough to see him through the unpleasant part of dealing with Jamie. He couldn’t let her beauty or her tears get in his way. She was the only one of the women who could identify him and that was too bad.

As he neared the bottom of the hill, the city came into view again. Now he could see the side of the Hilton Hotel and the top of the 5th Street Public Market. The jail was nearby too, but Ryan didn’t look for it. He crossed Pearl and made a left on Cheshire Avenue, heading around the back of the butte and away from downtown. Going this way, he could stick to the back roads and side streets, keeping a low profile. If a cop was sitting in front of his apartment, they might be looking for this van too. His neighbors could describe the van if the cops talked to them.

The ants in his veins made him so jumpy he had trouble keeping the van moving in a straight line. The last thing he needed was to get pulled over for suspicion of drunk driving. He kept coming back to the cop near the alley behind his apartment. Had his PO issued a warrant because he missed his last appointment? Or did they know about the dykes? Ryan suspected they knew about the rapes, but he didn’t know how they knew. He thought he’d been careful, covering their heads and using condoms.

His shook his head to push the past away. He couldn’t think about his old life anymore. He had to take care of business and get out of town. In Alaska, he could start fresh. They wouldn’t even look for him there. He might even find a doctor and start taking his meds again. Maybe that had been his mistake. As much as he hated the fuzzy-head feeling, the meds kept his anger in check. Maybe in Alaska, it wouldn’t matter. He doubted there were many dykes in the last great frontier. Alaska wouldn’t be anything like Eugene. Here, you couldn’t go into a store without seeing a couple of lesbos.

From Railroad Boulevard, he crossed over to the Northwest Expressway. Not a single car on the long straight road running parallel to the railroad. He pushed the van to sixty and thought about how he would silence Jamie. He hated the idea of bashing in her pretty head and leaving her ugly forever. She was so frail, he figured he could strangle her easily enough. He would have sex with her one more time first. The thought gave him a hard-on. Ryan shifted in the seat to get comfortable. He was almost there.

Jamie carried the metal bar she’d taken from the closet and shuffled back to the bed, the chain clinking on the floor behind her. This bed was not like her bed at home with the thick comforter and ruffled skirt hiding the suitcases and other junk she kept under it. It was small and hard with only a single brown blanket. The box spring mattress showed and so did the space under the bed, but it wasn’t a big deep space. Jamie kneeled and pushed the bar under the bed on the side near the bathroom, leaving it about four inches from the edge.

Getting up was a struggle with the chain around her waist. She walked over to the door and stood, looking back at the bed. She couldn’t see the bar. As she moved closer, the metal came into view. Of course, she was staring right at it. Ryan would have no reason to look down. Jamie kneeled and pushed the metal bar another two inches deeper under the box springs. She laid on her back near the edge to see if she could reach it. She couldn’t get to it without rolling to the side. Did that matter? Jamie kneeled on the floor again and pulled the bar back toward her an inch. That would have to be good enough.

She sat on the edge of the bed, heart racing with anticipation even as she shivered from the cold. This experience was not something she was prepared for in any way. She had never played sports or engaged in any kind of roughhousing. Her father had tried to teach her self-defense when she was in high school, but she’d had no interest. She regretted all of that now. Why hadn’t she tried harder? Because Dad wanted so badly to toughen her up? Jamie would have cried with remorse, but she was all cried out.

It was time to fight, even though she had no idea how. If she got lucky and struck a deadly blow and managed somehow to get free, she promised herself she would live her life differently in the future. She would finish college, become a social worker, and make Raina proud. She would join a gym, build some muscles, and make her father proud. She would stand, chin up, and not be afraid of everything.

Jamie almost laughed at herself, but the sound stuck in her throat. She worried she didn’t have the strength to hit Ryan hard enough to knock him out. She was wimpy even on a good day, and today she was in pain all over and scared to death. What if she only knocked him out, what then? Keep whacking him on the head every time he moved? Could she do that? The thought made her a little queasy. She took five long slow breaths, willing herself to be calm. She needed the element of surprise. He could not suspect that anything had changed while he was gone. Jamie changed her mind about where to keep the metal bar.

Suddenly, she had to pee. Jamie shuffled to the bathroom, relieved herself, then stared in the mirror. She had the same look her grandma had after surgery—pale, pained, and uncertain. Would this be the last time she saw her own face?

Footsteps pounded across the back yard. He was coming.

Jackson worried he would miss the turnoff leading up to the butte. He hadn’t been there since Katie was a little kid. The narrow road was right where his memory said it was. He made a quick left and was instantly transported from a midtown residential area to a rural single-lane road, climbing through a lush steep forest. Only the lights of the Shelton-McMurphy-Johnson House, glowing through the trees at the base of the butte, reminded him he was still in downtown Eugene. The three-story Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion had been built by a doctor in 1888 and was now a historic landmark, rented out for special occasions. Jackson was a little ashamed he had never been inside it.

Tonight, he flew by the landmark, pushing his cruiser past a reasonable speed for the dark narrow road. In a moment, he noticed lights in his rearview mirror closing in rapidly behind him. When the car got within twenty yards, it suddenly slacked off. Jackson could see that it was a dark sedan like the one he was driving. Evans. He had somehow beaten her here.

Jackson rounded the last corner. The road flattened out into a parking lot overlooking the city. No sightseers or romantically inclined couples were taking in the view on this cold night in February. No blue cargo van either. Not at this spot anyway. He remembered another road, leading to the other side of the butte. From there, the hill dropped down in a ninety-degree angle of sheer rock. Climbers used the rock cliff for practice.

Jackson jumped out of his car just as Evans pulled up next to him. A freezing wind blew across the top of the hill and made him realize he was not dressed for an extended outdoor search. Jackson looked out at the city below. Was Bodehammer still out there somewhere?

“Looks pretty desolate up here,” Evans commented, flipping on a flashlight.

“Did you call Lammers and ask for patrol officers?”

“Yep. We should have ten or twelve officers here very soon. She even called out a canine unit.”

Dread had filled his stomach as soon as Jackson saw the empty parking lot. The feeling wouldn’t shake loose. “We may find Jamie Conner’s body here, but I think Bodehammer is likely rolling down the road. His sister-in-law thinks he’ll head for Alaska.”

“His vehicle and his picture are in the system. Someone will spot him.” Evans touched his arm. “Don’t worry, he’ll be in custody within a week or two.”

“Unless he’s halfway across Canada by now. That’s a lot of territory for law enforcement to cover. A lot of acreage for a man to hide in.”

“Let’s start looking anyway.”

Jackson appreciated her attitude, but couldn’t bring himself to answer. Instead, he called Schak. This time Schak picked up. “Hey, Jackson, what did you find out?”

“That Bodehammer likes to come up to Skinner’s Butte, which is where Evans and I are now. What’s the situation at the house on Pondview?”

“It looks like no one has been there for months. The gravel driveway has two-foot tall weeds, the house is completely dark, and the garage door has been boarded over.”

“Was there any way to get inside?”

“The front door was locked.”

“What about the back?”

A significant silence.

“I didn’t go around back.” Another silence. “Shit. I’m sorry. But you should see this place. No one has used that driveway in a long time.”

Jackson weighed the possibilities. Schak’s instincts were probably right, but a lot of properties had more than one entrance. His own backyard had a drive-through gate that opened into an alley. Schak had not even walked around to the back to check it out. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at headquarters.”

They were an equal distance away. “I’m going out to the house to look around some more. Why don’t you come up to the butte and help Evans?” Jackson clicked the phone shut. That kind of sloppiness was not like Schak. Still, Jackson was glad to get off the butte. He did not want to be the one to find Jamie’s body.