Lot’s return to Sodom Read online

  “So, it could be sexually motivated and our perp wasn’t interested in the old man,” Calvin offered.

  Streeter nodded. “The Crooked Man had killed three people by the time I turned the files over to Shank. None of them was naked. All of them had been hit on the back of the skull with a blunt object.”

  “The female vic clearly has been hit on the back of the skull with a blunt object,” Calvin said, scowling as he did.

  “But she’s naked. And the wound. It’s all wrong.”

  “All wrong? Of course it’s all wrong, Streeter. The woman is dead.”

  Streeter shook his head. Secretly, he doubted himself as to what was conjecture and what was factual because he hadn’t reviewed the Crooked Man case in nearly a decade. Three murders in the Black Hills, and he believed they were all linked.

  “See how this one is almost round? It’s what I remembered of the first three.” Pointing to the woman’s skull, he added, “This is not.”

  Calvin sighed. “Shank agrees with you that weapons used were not the same. We’ll have to wait on the autopsy. Although the Crooked Man case has gone cold, Shank thinks both of these murders fit the modus operandi, especially because they are different weapons. He thinks the Crooked Man is on the move again after all these years.”

  Streeter pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the windows.

  Tentatively, Calvin added, “And he wants your help.”

  “I know. I read the e-mail. I just don’t understand why he wants me. The man can’t stand me.”

  Calvin swung his legs off the desk and joined Streeter by the large windows, sharing the view of the stunning sunset.

  “He thinks he has a solid suspect. He wants to partner with you on this because it was your case originally.”

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea, partnering with Shank.”

  “He’s making an effort, Streeter,” Calvin argued. “And he knows that area well. He’s been there a long time. Might come in handy.”

  “I’ve considered all of that,” Streeter said, running his fingers through his short white hair. The military buzz cut sprang to attention the instant his fingertips trailed away. Wrapping his hands behind his neck, he added without explanation, “If I go, I want to do this one my way. I know the area too. I was assigned to that bureau as a first office agent, remember?”

  Calvin nodded.

  Although Calvin was only three or four years older, Streeter always considered him a father figure. His soft, fleshy face, kind as it was, was rutted with years of challenging and stressful situations that had aged him, not necessarily in appearance, but battle-earned wisdom beyond others his age. His graying hair was combed over his balding head and his rimless glasses perched delicately on his round nose.

  “I don’t need him as my partner on this case,” Streeter concluded, padding back to an easy chair on the opposite side of his boss’s desk. “I want the case assigned back to me. All the files, evidence, notes.”

  The Denver SAC put his hands up in surrender. “Okay. No problem. I told you it was your decision. But remember. Shank is the lead investigator on this case, and I don’t have authority to assign you as the lead investigator. He does. So unless you can convince him to make you the lead, you’ll have to do it his way. Do you want to take on this assignment or not?”

  “He asked for my help,” Streeter reminded Calvin. “And he’ll get it only if we don’t have to work side by side.”

  Calvin glowered and sunk into his leather chair across from Streeter. “Okay, cut the malarkey, Streeter. We both know you want to take this case on whether or not you’re the lead investigator. When are you leaving?”

  “I’m on the 6:45 am flight,” Streeter answered, leaning forward in his chair and rubbing his weary eyes.

  “Tomorrow morning?” Calvin said looking at the clock.

  With a boyish grin and devilish look in his eye, Streeter added, “Shank’s e-mail to you an hour ago indicated he wants me in the Rapid City Bureau by nine o’clock, and it’s about an eight-hour drive. So I’m going to tell him to get me wheels and I’m flying up on the next flight, which is tomorrow morning.”

  “I saw that. He’s only messing with you because he can,” Calvin said with a grin. “Like I said, it’s okay by me if you want to tell Bob Shankley to go to hell.”

  “I know,” Streeter agreed, his own grin fading as quickly as it had appeared. “But you know I can’t. I have to do this. I doubt if he’s changed. I’ll placate him for a while to see if I can get him to assign me lead on the case. If not, I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “You understand the Sturgis Rally started this past weekend and their main suspect is with the Lucifer’s Lot. The clock is ticking. He’ll want you to go undercover immediately.”

  “As long as it’s not with him,” Streeter answered.

  Calvin watched him with gentle eyes, his jowls sagging slightly as he waited for Streeter to continue. Streeter was amazed at how well Calvin knew him after all these years, knowing he indeed had more to say on the subject.

  Streeter arched an eyebrow. “Dangling this unsolved case in front of me is like asking an alcoholic if he wants a drink. Knows it’s the worst thing for him, but can’t refuse. Of course I couldn’t say no, even if it means working with Bob Shankley again.”

  Calvin smiled.

  “Why’d you do it?” Streeter asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Why’d you let him reopen my case?”

  “Streeter, the two murdered bodies found today reopened the case, not me.”

  “Not the Crooked Man case. The Glass Slipper case. You knew he didn’t have any evidence on that poor woman.”

  Calvin looked at Streeter, dumbfounded. “That was a lifetime ago.”

  “Fifteen years,” Streeter said.

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge,” Calvin said. “The Glass Slipper. I’d forgotten all about that.”

  “Not me.”

  Under Calvin Lemley’s direction as the temporary SAC assigned to the Rapid City Bureau, Bob Shankley and Streeter raided and closed the Glass Slipper, the local brothel in Deadwood, South Dakota, just a few miles northwest of Sturgis.

  Calvin’s eyes were intensely clear, his smile nearly euphoric. “Truthfully?”

  Streeter nodded.

  “That woman he tried to taint in the indictments that followed was no more a prostitute than Mother Theresa. I reopened the case to see just how far Bob Shankley would go with his phony claims that she was,” Calvin admitted.

  “Satisfied?”

  Calvin closed his eyes and shook his head. “He’s what gives the bureau a bad name, Streeter. And I would never have allowed anything to happen to that woman.”

  Streeter scowled. “I didn’t really have a choice on this case, did I?”

  “Not hardly,” Calvin said. “Do you really think if they asked for our help I’d send anyone but you?”

  Calvin swiveled his chair around to the computer on the credenza behind him, and sent his fingers flying across the keyboard. “There. I’ve sent you all the electronic files that Bob scanned in from the cold cases.”

  “My old files? From the Crooked Man?”

  He nodded. “And Bob’s. He said if you accepted this challenge, you can have a copy of what’s on file for these cases.”

  Streeter took a seat across from him at the large oak desk. “My old files. I haven’t seen those in years. Well, that in and of itself is worth it, even if I can’t convince Shank to assign lead investigator to me.”

  “All I know is that Bob Shankley asked specifically for you. I was going to tell him to take a flying leap, at first, knowing that man is up to something, but then I decided you should do this. Let’s see if he’ll be able to control his politically honed temper,” Calvin suggested. After a beat, he added, “You know he’s gunning for my job.”

  “I don’t doubt that he’s trying to kill two birds with one stone, Cal. He’s setting me up for a fall, tha
t’s for sure,” Streeter said, narrowing his eyes. “I just can’t figure out what he’s up to, and I’ll have to put up with him until I find out.”

  “He said you’d know once you reviewed what they have on this case. You wouldn’t have to take any guff from him or anyone like him if you’d take on a SAC position,” Calvin reminded Streeter.

  “We’ve been down this road before. Don’t go there, my friend. You know I enjoy being a field agent.”

  “You’d be good at managing an office,” Calvin argued. “At least consider accepting the squad leader duties, for Pete’s sake.”

  Streeter’s steely blue eyes narrowed and burned a warning to Calvin.

  “Easy, friend. Just a suggestion. It’s my job; you know, develop our leaders.”

  Streeter watched Calvin as he pushed back in his chair, comfortable with his decision.

  “You think he’s dirty?”

  “As a SAC?” Calvin clarified. “Probably does everything by the book. As a person? You bet your sweet bippy. I think he’s as crooked as they come. In this particular case? I doubt it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Knowing Shank, he has something at risk with this thing somehow or he never would have involved you.”

  “The Crooked Man killed this man,” Streeter stabbed at the photo on the screen behind Calvin’s desk.

  “And that’s a case that needs to be solved, whether or not the Crooked Man killed the woman too,” agreed Calvin. “I have confidence you’ll solve both, as long as you keep your cool working with Bob Shankley.”

  “Right.”

  “If he’s into trouble somehow up there, compromised his ethics too far with something, you’ll know,” Calvin offered.

  “How?”

  “Well, the more involvement he has with a case or aspects of the case, the more likely he has a desired outcome, regardless of what’s right and just. My guess is if he needs this case solved badly enough he’ll assign you the lead. If he needs to cover up something that stinks, like a cat in the litter box, he’ll be busy in that particular area. If he wants a desired outcome that is not likely to happen in the natural course of your investigation, he’ll partner with you. He’ll insist on it. Regardless of your insistence to the contrary.”

  Streeter grimaced as if someone had dropped a crate of rotten eggs in the middle of Calvin’s desk. “Don’t say that. He wouldn’t. He needs me to solve this case or he wouldn’t have involved me. Despite your optimism that he’s making an attempt to make good and play nice after all these years.”

  “He’ll insist,” Calvin wagered. “That’s how he started his request. ‘I need Pierce to partner with me on this mess that’s brewing up here. Fast.’ If he’s up to something, he’ll insist on partnering with you and keep you on a tight leash. If not because he’s in some kind of trouble, at least to keep you out of his business. He would never allow you the slightest opportunity to make him look bad, Streeter. Not after everything that’s happened.”

  “I’m not going to let that happen,” Streeter said, meaning every word. “I have two cases to solve. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Calvin chuckled.

  Streeter rose, his six-foot frame packed with nothing but muscle, his tanned skin stretched tight and firm beneath his white button-down shirt. He cleared his throat and winked mischievously at his boss. “I’ll tell Shank you’d like to treat him and his wife to dinner the next time they’re in Denver.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Calvin warned.

  “I would.”

  IF I’D HAD ANY idea that the body they’d recovered yesterday at Broken Peaks was Jens’s girlfriend, I would have told him what I was up to yesterday. As it was, I had hell to pay for worrying Mom by taking the Gray Ghost and leaving her a note that said simply that I was going for a drive. Considering the circumstances, I never did tell her that I had been helping Clint White at the Nemo Quarry. I’m glad, now, that I didn’t tell her where I’d gone because she would have told Dad or Jens or both and I would have been grilled about the details rather than be freed up to help Jens today.

  Dad received the call from Jens this morning at six thirty saying that he wouldn’t be in to work and telling Dad they had found Michelle. Her parents had called Jens even earlier than that after identifying her body, and he had already been to the morgue since their call to see Michelle for himself. We were already up having breakfast at that hour, the Bergens all early risers thanks to Mom. When Dad shared the news, I called Jens back and insisted I stay with him, warning that if I didn’t, Catherine probably would. Our sister Catherine, also known as Sister Catherine, was the most kind-hearted person who ever lived, and she seemed to have a natural homing instinct for the needy, but her motherly instinct was so powerful it was smothering, not unlike her hugs, in which you found yourself engulfed by her matronly breasts.

  Warning heeded, he picked me up within the hour.

  All I could think of now as I was walking out to his truck was how much I hate funerals.

  The mournful music, the macabre open casket, the morbid procession of pallbearers among a sea of black. The sorrow. Most of all, though, I despise my own inability to find the right words, or any words, to comfort those who are hurting. Especially when the one grieving is someone I love. I was glad I had missed Lisa Henry’s funeral, unconscious as I was at the time. And I dreaded having to go to the one that would be scheduled soon for Michelle.

  But I also knew this wasn’t about me. It was all about Jens, and whatever he needed right now, I’d give him. I couldn’t bear to see my little brother suffering, and his face showed every tortured moment he was experiencing.

  “Don’t look at me that way” was the only thing my brother said as we walked away from our parents’ house.

  I knew the look.

  I’d seen it before at funerals: the pity in people’s eyes as they passed the pew of bereaved family members. I prefer empathy to pity. A fine line, sure. But to me, offering pity has always seemed to put the other at a disadvantage; it implies condescension for the deprived in life, a class separation that isn’t deserved. After all, we all go through losing a loved one at one point or another in life. Humans allow grief to isolate them from others for a temporary period, quarantined, like having leprosy in a nudist colony. Other primates behave like that, too. For example, Coco the gorilla cradles her dead baby for days while the rest of the clan ignores the insanity. And not one of them is stupid enough to go near the mournful mother.

  Empathy, on the other hand, keeps the bereaved as an equal. Empathy builds understanding, a bridge between people. It’s not an isolating gesture like pity.

  I didn’t think I had any pity in me, but from Jens’s reaction, I must have been wrong.

  “Sorry,” I managed, finding it hard to relax the tension around my eyes and brows born of pity. His otherwise handsome face looked ghastly. The dark circles under his eyes, the hollow cheeks, the pale skin, the stooped shoulders on his tall, lean frame. And the emptiness in his eyes.

  Having just spent the day with him yesterday, I couldn’t believe how he had aged in such a short time. Although I had debated with myself at the time whether or not to say something to the EMTs or to Jens when he and Travis returned to the plant forty-five minutes after he’d left me alone in his truck, long after the biker girl had been taken away in an ambulance, in hindsight I was glad I had stayed quiet about all the commotion that had occurred behind his ready mix plant. Jens was still worked up over the customer’s complaint about a job that he and Travis had gone to address. But that was nothing compared to him finding out this morning that his girlfriend had been found murdered. And looking back, telling Jens what I’d witnessed would only have added more stress and seemed so trivial by comparison.

  Besides, the girl in Sturgis was probably doing fine. She must have fainted in the heat or something. Creed could have been mistaken about not finding a pulse, or maybe he lied so they would all do what they did afterwards. She couldn’t be dead. She hadn’
t fallen that far to the ground. She was too young. And since those bikers didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to her, I didn’t see the point in sticking around and sharing what I’d seen. And maybe I was a little unnerved by that final glare from the biker named Mully. No doubt, he caught the license plate on the truck. Either way, even after crouching against the floorboards of Jens’s truck yesterday, working all afternoon in the loader, a rigorous walk in the woods last evening, and several trips up and down the stairs last night at Mom and Dad’s house, I didn’t sleep too well, and I wasn’t about to pipe up about it now.

  Just like I wasn’t about to share what I had done yesterday afternoon at the Nemo Quarry.

  “I’m really, really sorry, Moose,” a term of endearment I called him from time to time. I gave him a hug before tossing my bag in the back of his truck and jumping into the passenger’s side. Not eloquent, but 100 percent sincere.

  He slid in behind the wheel.

  We drove in silence to his house on Teepee Street. I was going to mention how green his lawn looked despite the scorching heat of August, to marvel at how well he maintained his house even with his hectic schedule, to say how glad I was to be staying with him, but opted for the appropriate silence instead. (At first, Mom had resisted the idea of me staying at Jens’s house, but because I agreed to be compliant for once and go see Dr. James this morning at nine, she was willing to agree. I told her I didn’t need the spare truck, the Gray Ghost, she and Dad drove; I’d ask Jens to give me a ride instead, an excuse to keep us close. She bought into my logic.)

  His diesel truck rumbled to a stop as he pulled into the driveway. He sat for a long moment staring at his chiffon yellow garage, far too small for his oversized truck to fit inside. I sat staring, too, waiting for him to either go for the door handle or talk. Or not. Two minutes had passed as we sat in the truck, the warm sun warding off the chill of the brutal news.

  “Funeral’s in three days,” he said.

  I nodded, knowing there was no way the body would be released by the authorities that early in a homicide investigation. At least, I didn’t think so, but what did I know?