Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For (5 page)

“She uses a laptop and takes it with her everywhere.”

Where the hell was it? Had her attacker taken her cell phone and laptop? Had he thrown them away to cover his tracks?

Jackson stuck around for another ten minutes, but didn’t come up with anything that seemed worth pursuing at the moment. He gave Martha his card and encouraged her to call someone to come and stay with her for a while. He could tell she was still in shock. When she came out of it, she would call him and ask a lot of questions about how her granddaughter had died. He dreaded the conversation and planned to be vague. No need to tell Martha about the assault with the vibrator just yet. It would come out in court, months down the road. Martha would be better prepared for it then.

Jackson headed for his car, calling Evans on the way. She picked up immediately. “Hey, Jackson.”

“Did you file the incident report?”

“Yes, sir. What did you find out?”

“Raina was a good girl. She didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. She attended college and planned to become a drug and alcohol counselor. She collected clothes and blankets for Shelter Care, an organization that helps homeless people. She didn’t have a boyfriend or hang out with anyone creepy.”

“She sounds too good to be true.”

“Maybe.” Still, Jackson hoped to have such a positive report about his own daughter when she was twenty. Kids could go in so many directions, and there was so little you could do to stop them. “Are you doing okay? Do you want an assignment?”

“I’m fine. Give it to me.”

“I need you to interview Jamie Conner. She’s the victim’s best friend. They were supposed to get together last night. Find out if they did. Press Jamie hard about Raina’s social life, especially a boyfriend.” Jackson had learned the hard way that his own daughter didn’t tell him the whole truth. Now he questioned, at least internally, everything Katie told him about her location and behavior.

“I know how to do my job,” Evans responded.

“I know you do. That’s why I always call you out.”

A few minutes later, Jackson pulled into the street. Thursday night at 10:50 p.m., and Eugene was quiet. Still, a young woman had been murdered about this time the night before. It could be happening again right now. Perpetrators were everywhere, operating in the shadows, in locked apartments and unwatched parking lots. When Jackson started on the police force nearly twenty years ago, Eugene had been a safe, midsized college town populated with academics, joggers, loggers, and hippies. Now the population had doubled, the hippies had grown old, the loggers had become self-employed arborists, and a methamphetamine scourge was slowly wiping out the academics’ sense of safety. Recently an old couple had been murdered in their home for the twelve dollars in their cookie jar.

Jackson gunned the engine and headed out West 11th, which would eventually turn into rural Highway 126, leading toward the Oregon coast. It reminded him of what he and everyone else still loved about Eugene: thirty minutes from the mountains on one side, and sixty minutes from the ocean the other way. With gorgeous scenery in between.

He passed a cluster of big-box stores at the edge of town and was grateful for the lack of shopping traffic. Schak hadn’t called him, so he hoped Gorman would be home, doing something stupid. With petty criminals, you could count on stupidity, but occasionally, murderers were clever.

Later, as Jackson bounced down the Gormans’ gravel driveway, passing through a thick stand of fir trees, he wondered if Raina’s car had traveled this route the night before. He worried he might be running over and ruining tire tracks or some other evidence. The rain had stopped, so at least nothing was being washed away. He considered parking and walking, but the driveway could be miles long. He’d never been in this specific area before.

About a quarter-mile down, Schak’s black truck blocked the road. Beyond it, the lights of a home glowed in a small clearing about a hundred yards in the distance. Excellent, Jackson thought. Schak had stayed out of the parking area where Raina may have been killed, with her own car as the weapon. If Gorman was using meth, he may not have covered his crime well—or even at all. Meth destroyed brain cells faster than salt melted ice. Jackson had seen some reasonably intelligent people turn themselves into lifetime morons after about four years of heavy use. He thought about one of his informants, and the crazy idiots who had shot at them tonight. They would probably spend ten years in prison for that one moment of drug-induced irrational behavior.

Jackson shut down his headlights, parked, and exited the Impala as quietly as he could. Sig Sauer in hand, he stepped up next to Schak, who now stood beside his truck.

“I ran a check on Gorman,” Schak said. “He’s got an extensive record. Most of it drug related. He’s also been charged with, but not convicted of, assault. He’s currently on parole.”

“Remind me to talk with his PO.”

“What’s the plan for now?”

“We stay nonconfrontational and try to get him to come with us voluntarily. But we are taking him downtown, regardless of what he claims. I’ll be right back.” Jackson holstered his firearm and went back to his car for his Taser. The department had finally decided to add stun guns to its arsenal of approved weapons. The decision came after a blast of citizen outrage over a psychotic teenager who’d been killed by police. Everyone outside the department seemed to believe the knife-wielding girl would still be alive if the officers had used a Taser instead of semiautomatics. They might be right, but a Taser wasn’t exactly harmless. Jackson had experienced the 50,000 volts of electricity as part of his training to carry the weapon. It was the most excruciating pain he’d ever experienced.

They approached the trailer in silence, moving rapidly across the open space. Jackson smelled dog shit and hoped he wasn’t stepping in it. The quarter moon gave them very little illumination, and the Gormans weren’t hospitable enough to leave a porch light on. Jackson knocked gently. After a long wait a woman answered the door. She was short and chubby and dressed in tight, teenage-style clothes. Her face looked forty, and her eyes looked sixty.

“Oh shit.” She stood, undecided about her next move.

“Are you Cindy Gorman?”

“You know I am.” She rolled her eyes and stepped back.

“We’d like to talk to you and your husband, Bruce. Is he here?”

“He’s sleeping.”

“Then we’ll talk to you for now. Would you like to chat here or at the station?” Jackson posed it as a straight question, but they both knew better. He saw this as an opportunity to get Cindy’s story, independent of her husband’s, to see if they conflicted.

She let out a big sigh, then stepped aside to let them in. The living room was cramped and cluttered and various odors assaulted his nose—dirty carpet, sweaty laundry, and more dog shit. It was not the worst home he’d entered, by far. A young, blond boy sat watching television.

“Go to your room, Josh,” Cindy commanded. The boy moved quickly, with only a glance at the cops. Cindy shuffled to the kitchen, which was at one end of the trailer, away from the bedrooms. Did she really think they would question her, then leave without waking Bruce? Jackson gave Schak a head nod, and his partner took up a post where the living room met the hallway. He wanted to question the boy as well, but not now.

Jackson and Cindy sat across from each other at a small, scarred wooden table. He was relieved to smell only dish soap.

“Raina Hughes came to your home last night around 5 p.m.,” he said. “Tell me about her visit.”

“No, she didn’t.” Cindy shook her head emphatically. “We haven’t seen her.”

“She told people she was coming here. She bought gas at the station down the road.”

Cindy faked a puzzled look. “I don’t know what to say. She didn’t come here.”

“Did you meet her somewhere?”

“No. Like I said, we haven’t seen her.”

Jackson heard footsteps in the hall and quickly stood. Bruce Gorman was on the move, looking sleepy and pissed off at the same time. Jackson was at least thirty pounds heavier, but without the weapon at his side, Gorman would have made him nervous. He looked like one of those skinny, mean types who like to fight and prove his worth against bigger men.

“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Gorman stood between the two cops, his body coiled for action.

“We’d like to talk to you about Raina Hughes. And we’d like you to come down to the station.”

“I haven’t seen that bitch, and I have nothing to say.”

Jackson decided to cut it short. Sometimes diplomacy was a waste of time. “One of two things is going to happen here. You are going to put your hands against the wall and let us search and cuff you for the ride, or,” Jackson drew out the word for emphasis, “I’ll hit you with the Taser, then cuff you. You decide.” Jackson had the stun gun in hand.

Gorman was primitive. His drug use had stunted his emotional development and he knew only two responses: fight or flight. Faced with confinement or excruciating pain, he fled. The room was small, the front door was closed, and Jackson was in the best shape of his life, thanks to Kera’s influence. Before Gorman could get the door open, Jackson had closed the gap and hit him in the upper back with the Taser prongs. Gorman’s legs buckled and he went down. In the past, before the Taser was an option, Jackson would have tackled him, possibly getting injured in the scuffle.

Gorman made horrible wounded-animal sounds as he lay on the floor writhing. Jackson remembered what the shock had felt like and had a split second of regret. As Schak cuffed Gorman, his crazy wife threw herself on Jackson, beating him on the back and shoulders with her fat little fists. He took the blows while he pocketed the Taser, then used a wristlock move to take Cindy down and cuff her. She screamed obscenities the whole time.

Crying noises came from the hallway. Jackson looked up to see Josh, watching intently as a cop pressed a knee into his mother’s back.
Shit
. Had he seen his father get Tasered too? Poor kid. No matter how shitty his parents were, he didn’t need to see them treated like this. Jackson wished he’d called a social worker to remove the boy from the home first.

“Josh,” he called out, trying to be heard over Cindy’s swearing. “It’s going to be okay. We just want to talk to your parents.” The boy kept crying. Jackson didn’t believe his bullshit either. It would never be okay for this kid until he was old enough to make his own choices. Even then, the odds were stacked against him.

Jackson made a quick call to the front desk officer at headquarters and asked her to track down Josh’s caseworker. After Jackson questioned the boy, Josh would need a familiar face and a place to stay.

Jamie dreamed about flying, zooming high across the valley, the river below looking like a tiny squiggled pencil mark. Then a big hand roughly shook her shoulder, and her father said her name. “Jamie, wake up. It’s important.”

She sat up quickly, responding to his urgent tone. Her father was not easily rattled. “What’s going on?” she asked, needing to know, yet afraid.

“Get dressed and come into the living room.” Her father turned and left without saying another word. Jamie’s heart fluttered, then began to pound. This would be bad; she could feel it in her bones. Was it Mom? Had her mother been in a car accident? What time was it anyway? She glanced at the clock: 11:13 p.m. Her mother was never out this late. Jamie grabbed the jeans she’d worn earlier off the floor and pulled them on.

Maybe her grandmother had died. Nana had been in a nursing home for years and had another stroke just last month. Jamie pulled on a sweatshirt and hurried down the hall in her fuzzy slippers. You can handle this, she told herself. She saw an unfamiliar woman seated on the couch. Her black slacks and beige sweater seemed harmless enough, but the gun at her waist was alarming. Why was there a cop in her house? Jamie’s nerves jangled and her skin tightened. This would be very bad.

Her mother moved in and put an arm around Jamie, guiding her to the couch across from where the cop sat. Her mother’s expression was braced, like it had been the time she announced Jamie would be attending the local YMCA camp instead of cheerleader camp in California. “Jamie, this is Detective Evans. She needs to talk to you about Raina.”

No
!
Not Raina
. Jamie had known from the moment her father said it was important. She just hadn’t let herself think it. Jamie had been a little worried about Raina—and herself—ever since that night they had been followed. Then Raina hadn’t shown up or called last night. Jamie took a deep breath. Maybe Raina is okay, she told herself. Jamie held her breath and waited.