Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For (35 page)

An idea came to him. He could get that fucking dyke Raina out of Jamie’s life for good and give his daughter a chance to be normal. At the same time, he could plant a single hair at the scene and pin her death on a crazy scumbag who was raping lesbos and needed to be locked up anyway.

The plan was brilliant, but so troubling that Conner rejected it immediately. He could never go through with it. As a marine, he had killed in the name of his country. He knew he could kill someone in defense of his family without a moment’s hesitation, but murder Raina in cold blood? The outcome appealed to him, but the act was too repulsive. Conner put the baggie with the blond hairs into his briefcase and decided to mull it around for a day or so.

The next day he saw Raina kissing and groping his innocent daughter, right there on his own doorstep. That had sealed Raina’s fate. He could not—as a God-fearing duty-bound father—allow Raina to lead Jamie into that degenerate and despised lifestyle. He could not let Raina steal his daughter’s future. From that moment, Raina had ceased to be a person. She was the enemy and he intended to destroy her.

Conner sat in his truck remembering that dreadful night. He had followed Raina out to the property on Pine Grove and parked in the trees to wait for her. Shooting out her tire had been easy. Bashing her head into the side of the car had taken more resolve. The final blow with the flashlight had been an act of mercy. The simulated rape on her corpse had repulsed him, and Conner wondered if God would forgive him.

Now Jamie was missing and Conner wondered if God was punishing him. He prayed for Jamie to be safe, but the prayer gave him little comfort. Conner stared at the dark abandoned house and tried to convince himself that Bodehammer had left town days ago. That his lovely Jamie was just off grieving somewhere and ignoring her parents. She would call him any minute and say she was on her way home. Conner’s cell phone was in his lap, and he subconsciously reached down to touch it. For now, all he could do was wait.

A glimmer of light flickered from behind the heavy front curtain. It came and went so quickly, he thought he had imagined it. He grabbed his Sig Sauer, climbed out of the truck, and hurried toward the front door. No harm in checking. As he neared the small front patio, Conner heard muffled thumping sounds coming from the back of the house. Someone was in there! It sounded like a struggle. He rushed to the front door and twisted the knob. Locked!

Conner ran back to his truck and grabbed a crow bar from under the seat. In five short seconds, he was back at the front door. He jammed the flat end of the bar into the small space between the retractable lock and the frame. One good hard shove and the lock popped, sending the door flying open. Conner ran through the front hallway, listening for the location of the sounds. He heard a loud thud from the left, then a woman’s voice cried out.

Jamie
!

As Jamie struggled under Ryan’s weight, a voice boomed near the door. “Get off her or I’ll blow your head off.”

Ryan froze. Jamie turned her head to see her father step into the small room. He held a gun aimed in their direction. Her father had come to save her!

“Get off her!”

“No! You’ll kill me the minute I’m clear.” Ryan shouted right next to her face.

“I won’t. I just want you to get off my daughter and get out of this town for good.”

Jamie felt the weight of Ryan’s body lighten. He had tensed and was ready to move.
Please
.
Just get off and do what he says
.

Ryan straightened his arms and pushed himself up. He pulled his feet up to the bed and eased himself back. He kept one eye on her father at all times. Ryan stood and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Move over to the wall.” Her father’s voice sounded tight, as if the words were breaking off as he spoke them.

“You said you’d let me go.”

“I will. Just move away from Jamie.”

Ryan hesitated, then took a step away from the bed, keeping his eye on the gun. Nothing happened, so he took another step. “Why don’t you put down the gun and let me get by?”

Her father glanced over at her as Jamie sat up. “Jamie, sweetheart, are you okay?”

“Yes.” Was she really? Would she ever be okay after this? That depended on what she found out next. “Did you kill Raina?”

Her dad looked startled. “No, honey. Of course not. This bastard did.”

“Bullshit.” Ryan spit the word out. “You killed her and thought you would pin it on me. You sent the cops after me, didn’t you?”

“Jamie, close your eyes and hold your hands over your ears.”

Instinctively, she did as she was told.

The blast of the gun was deafening and the room shook for a split second. Jamie wanted to keep her eyes closed, but they came open anyway. Ryan was on his back on the floor, blood pouring from his demolished forehead. Relief washed over her. The bastard would never hurt her again.

“Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

The gun was at her dad’s side and his eyes pleaded with her to understand. Even though she now had a glimmer of what had happened to Raina, Jamie would never really understand. “You killed her, didn’t you? You found out she was gay and you killed her to keep her away from me. As though you could keep me from being gay.”

“You’re not gay, Jamie. You never were. Now let’s go home.”

Jamie looked up defiantly. “But I
am
gay. I am definitely a lesbian. Am I still welcome in your home?” She would never go there again, but she wanted to know how he would handle this.

“Stop saying that. You’re not a lesbian!” His voice had an edge of panic she had never heard from her father before. “It was Raina and only Raina. She influenced you. She always did, even when you were in high school. Whatever Raina did, you followed. If she joined the choir, you joined the choir. Raina wanted to be a social worker, so you wanted to be a social worker. Raina went gay, so you thought you were gay too. You’re not, you’ll see. Just give it a chance.”

Jamie was devastated. The unthinkable was true. Her father had killed her best friend to keep his daughter from being a lesbian. Just how homophobic was he? Rage built up in every nerve in her body. The bastard, how dare he? Jamie decided to punish him in the only way she knew how.

“I am gay! I will always be gay.” She got up from the bed and lurched toward him, her voice becoming a shriek. “I am sexually attracted to women. I like looking at their naked bodies. I liked kissing Raina and feeling her breasts. In fact, I’m going to have sex with the first lesbian I run into when I get out of this hellhole. I’m going to put my face between her legs and—”

“Shut up!” Suddenly, his gun was pointed at her chest.

Jamie couldn’t stop. “I’m a dyke, a rug-muncher. I’m going to fall in love with another woman and have lesbian sex every day.”

“Shut up!” The gun shook in his hand.

“My lover and I will move to California and get married. I’ll get artificially inseminated and have your grandson. Then I’ll name the boy after you and raise him with my lesbian lover.”

She’d gone too far. Jamie saw the flash in his eyes. This time, she didn’t have a chance to close her eyes and cover her ears.

As Jackson drove, he had second thoughts about leaving Evans to handle the search at the butte. This trip to David Bodehammer’s house was probably a waste of time, but someone had to go inside. Even if Ryan wasn’t holed up in the house, Jackson might find something that would lead him to locate his suspect. He had nothing else to work with at this point.

Evans would call immediately if they found Bodehammer, Jackson told himself. He could be back on the butte in ten minutes. He kept heading out 6th Avenue, hitting all the lights and making good time. His stomach hurt, so he checked his watch. It was after eight o’clock, and he hadn’t eaten since morning. It had been a long busy day of interrogations and subpoenas and searches. And driving back and forth. Jackson was ready to get out of his car. He desperately needed a long run and a dinner with Kera.

As he turned left on Barger, his cell phone rang. “Jackson, it’s Jasmine Parker. I have some weird news.”

“Tell me.”

“Remember the bone that was in the dog’s mouth out at the Gormans’ trailer?” Excitement crept into Jasmine’s voice, despite her effort to keep it flat. “The missing persons database didn’t produce a hit, so I asked the lab to compare the DNA from the bone to Bruce Gorman’s DNA sample. Guess what? The bone belongs to Gorman’s child.”

“So Gorman has a dead kid buried out there in the woods somewhere?”

“It looks that way. We won’t be able to tell how the child died unless we can find the rest of the body.”

Jackson’s mind raced. “What happened to the dog? We need to find it. Maybe it will lead us to the rest of the bones.”

“I’ll call Lane County Animal Control in the morning. I hope it hasn’t been put down yet.”

“Do me a favor please? Call Sergeant Lammers and tell her about the DNA match. Ask her to call the captain at the jail. I want to make sure Gorman is not matrixed out again.” Jackson was relieved to know his pursuit of Gorman as a suspect had not been a misguided waste of time. His instincts about the ex-con had been right.

“Oh, and one other thing,” Parker said. “The tire treads we found at Gorman’s place had a flaw that showed up under close scrutiny. It turns out that flaw is only present in tires that were originally mounted on 2004 Dodge Rams.”

“Thanks, Jasmine, for working late and keeping me posted.”

Jackson stopped at the red light in front of the shopping area on the corner of Barger and Beltline. He glanced over at the McDonald’s parking lot and spotted a Dodge Ram. Those trucks were everywhere. Even narrowing it down to the year 2004 wouldn’t help his investigation much. A scene from earlier flashed in his mind. Ted Conner standing in the parking lot of the parole and probation office next to his late-model Dodge Ram. The truck was popular with law enforcement personnel too.

The light turned green and Jackson pressed the accelerator. He was only a mile from Bodehammer’s house now. Jackson couldn’t stop thinking about Ted Conner. He remembered Conner had referred to lesbians as lesbos. A lot of people did, Jackson thought. Conner also knew both Raina and Jamie. What had Evans said?
I think Jamie is afraid her parents will find out she’s gay
.

Jackson shook his head, disturbed by this line of thinking. Yet the first rule in law enforcement said there was no such thing as coincidence. The poet-stepmother-Bodehammer connection was solid for the attacks on Keesha Williams and Amy Hastings. Could Raina’s murder be a crime separate from the rapes? Committed by someone other than Bodehammer?
What about the DNA match
? The hair found on Raina’s body matched Bodehammer’s semen.

Temples pounding, Jackson turned right on Dakota, slowing down a bit for the residential area. The online map he’d looked at earlier indicated Pondview was toward the end, not far from the Golden Garden ponds. Jackson kept coming back to Ted Conner. He was Bodehammer’s parole officer. Ryan Bodehammer sat in Ted Conner’s office once or twice a month. How hard would it be to collect a piece of DNA from him? Was Conner capable of murder? And why? Was he enough of a bigot to murder a young woman because she was gay and in love with his daughter? The thought was ludicrous. Jackson tried to push it away. He had to focus on finding Bodehammer. The rapist was a threat to other young women even if he hadn’t killed Raina. Jackson had to search the house on Pondview with a clear head.

Near the end of Dakota, Jackson turned on Pondview, a short dead-end street. Another image flashed in his mind. A small black button tucked into an evidence box, along with an assortment of pennies and pens and trash. A button that could have fallen off the well-worn black suit jacket he’d seen Conner wearing this morning. Jackson tried to visualize the jacket to see what he remembered, but he was suddenly distracted by the sight of Conner’s truck parked on the gravel driveway in front of him.

What the hell
?

Jackson pulled in behind the truck, ensuring Conner couldn’t drive away without permission. What was the PO doing here? Looking for Bodehammer?

As Jackson opened his car door, a shot rang out from inside the house.
Holy shit
! His instinct was to run toward the house. Training overrode impulse and he called dispatch.