CHAPTER 7.
"Officer Carlan,"
Brosterhouse's voice boomed across the lobby. He accented
"Officer" as if to emphasize the distinction between a homicide
detective and a lowly patrolman.
Obviously, the Portland
detective had uncovered the restraining order.
“You left Bend at 6:00
A.M.?”
"Check with my
Sergeant. But, yeah.”
Brosterhouse was carrying a
Manila file, and now as they stood in the lobby with everyone looking on, he
opened it. It was filled with copies of the ongoing dispute between him
and Jamie.
"Can't we take this
somewhere private?" Carlan said, his voice low and even.
Brosterhouse ignored him; he
pulled one of the pages out of the file. "These letters make for
interesting reading. Especially this one -- and I quote: "If I
should be found dead, it will be Richard Carlan who killed me."
"That's bullshit,"
Carlan said, his face growing red as everyone in the lobby, civilian and cop
looked at him. "We just had a misunderstanding. We were
working it out."
"So she ran to Portland
and became a prostitute because you were working it out?"
"She was
hysterical. Crazy. I was on my way here to pick her up."
Brosterhouse stared at him
with an expression Carlan recognized. It was the hardnosed skepticism
that cops automatically turned on anyone they considered guilty.
"If that's true, I
could've arrested you. The restraining order is pretty clear.”
Carlan had always wondered
what he would do if he was accused of a crime he didn't commit. Would he
immediately clam up? Call a lawyer? The rational and experienced
cop inside him knew without a doubt that was the best thing to do. But he
fell back on the same protestations he'd heard a thousand times, from guilty
and innocent alike.
"I didn't do it.
She was dead already."
"Your alibi is
shaky. We know you were in Bend the
night before, but that gave you plenty of time to drive over.”
"But I loved
her!" God, how pathetic that sounded. How guilty! They
always said that, murderers who stabbed the 'one they loved' a hundred times,
who slashed and slashed until the 'one they loved' was obliterated.
"You are no longer
allowed anywhere near this case, Carlan. Go back to Bend. We'll
contact you."
"But I might be able to
help!" Being shut out of the case was an even bigger fear than being
suspected. He needed completion. Jamie had died before he could
talk some sense into her, before she could remove the restraining order and
those damning letters. He had an image of her, on her knees, while he
shoved the letters down her throat. Damn her. Why did she have to
die and leave him to deal with this shit?
From now on, they would
always look at him sideways, even in Bend where they knew him. He'd pass
in the hallway and there would be whispers, and laughter, and shame.
Jamie had done this to him, and now he couldn't change it. He was angry with
her, rightfully so, but even more aggravating was that his anger had no
outlet. Unless he turned it on the murderer, the bastard who had taken
her away before he could get to her and change her mind.
Brosterhouse leaned into
him. He was huge, probably twice Carlan's weight, though Carlan was just
a little below average in size. "If you were a Portland cop, I'd
have your badge. We don't look the other way here, like they do in
Bend. That small town bullshit doesn't wash here. Get out of town
before I throw you in jail for even thinking about breaking the
restraining order."
Carlan felt a sudden
calm. He was a cop. He knew the law. He wouldn't be bullied
like the poor saps he arrested everyday who didn't understand their
rights. He stared Brosterhouse in the eye.
"I didn't do it.
Fuck you."
He walked away, feeling like
he had regained a little of his pride. He knew other cops in Portland,
cops who would be willing to help. Brosterhouse was wrong -- the
"bullshit" wasn't confined to small towns, it was everywhere, big
cities and small, national or international or tiny hamlets. Bastard
wanted to pretend the systems of favors and the protection of your brothers
didn't apply to Portland? Who did he think he was talking to?
Turned out, Brosterhouse was
almost right. Carlan called three of his 'buddies' on the Portland police
force and got turned down by all of them. The first two simply hung up,
the third said, "I never much liked you, Carlan."
Time to pack up and go
home? Use his contacts back in Bend?
There was one more guy he
could try, but he hesitated. It was his emergency escape valve, the guy
he planned to turn to when all else failed.
"Hey, Funkadelic!"
"What do you want, Carlan,” John
Funk's voice was so cold, Carlan almost backed off.
"I need a favor."
"No."
"I still have it,
Funker. I still have the evidence...statute of limitations on
manslaughter is the same as murder. Hell, they might just charge you with
murder. After all the only witness who could testify it was a crime of
passion is me..." He started singing: "Who's got the
Funk? Bop. bop. bop. I got the Funk...Who's go the Funk? Bop,
Bop..."
"Shut up," his
former partner said. "I'm thinking about turning myself in. I
never did like the way that went down. I didn't mean to kill him."
Carlan felt the fish
slipping off the hook. "I know that! If it ever comes down, I
could totally testify to that. The guy deserved it -- raping a five-year
old girl. Hell, if you hadn't killed him, I probably would have!"
There was a long
silence. A sigh. "What do you want, Carlan?"
"I need the evidence on
a current case. A girl found dead this morning in a motel room on the
east side. Name of Jamie Lee Howe."
"Who's the lead?"
"Guy named
Brosterhouse."
Another long silence.
"Maybe I should just turn myself in now," John Funk said.
"Get it over with."
"No, no. Don't do
anything that will get you in trouble. Just...you know, help me
out."
"All right. This
one time. But don't ever ask me to help you again, Carlan. I'll
fucking turn myself in."
"I promise," Carlan
said. Well, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. But Carlan certainly
intended to test his former partner's resolve if he ever needed him
again.
"Remember, you
asshole. If I go down, you go down for withholding evidence."
"Sure,
sure." Not the way Carlan had it planned but if it made Funk feel
secure, than so be it.
"I'll call you back,”
Funk said, and hung up.
Carlan stayed in Portland
for another day, hanging out near the phone, watching Judge Judy and the other
judges all day. Law and Order marathons. He had enough time to
think, to wonder why he was trying so hard? Jamie was gone. Nothing
he could do about it.
Truth was, he wasn't as
crushed by it as he thought he would be. Still...he hated that he hadn't
been able to change her mind. He'd been thinking about her for so long
that something else needed to take her place. Revenge fit quite nicely.
The Portland police weren't
moving very fast. Prostitute killings were notoriously difficult to
solve. Stranger on stranger. If the killer used a condom and was
careful, he could almost always get away with it unless they found him weaving
down the road with a body in the back of the car.
It was going to be up to
him, and not the self-righteous Brosterhouse, to solve this case.
"What do you care?"
Funk asked, that evening. "From the files, you were on the verge of
killing her yourself."
"I loved her."
"You don't love anyone.
I remember how you treated women, Carlan."
"Yeah, but I never
killed anyone, Funky. Remember that."
"Only because you've
been lucky." There was a rustle of papers over the line.
"The DNA tests came back early. Kind of weird. They say, not
only can't they identify the perpetrator, they're not sure it's even
human. Probably contaminated."
The two puncture wounds in
Jamie's neck passed through his mind, but he dismissed the wild speculation
instantly. Humans killed humans. Always had, always will.
Only one day and the case
was already going cold. Carlan could sense the Portland police were on
the verge of giving up, putting it on the back burner. As a last
resort, he asked for traffic citations in the surrounding area on the night of
the murder. Even if it was the way they had caught the Son of Sam, most
detectives considered it a Hail Mary pass, too time-consuming with too little
reward to pursue in most cases.
Carlan took the time, spending
most of the night and early morning going through it, and just as he was about
to give up, he came across it. A "Warning" for parking in a no
parking zone on the morning after the murder. A
"well-dressed" man in a late model Cadillac Escalade, sleeping off a
binge in the backseat. He rang up Funk and had him plug the license plate
number into the database, and it came back immediately as being registered at a
motel on the night after the murder in a motel in Bend. By the name of Jonathan Evers.
In Bend. That was too
much of a coincidence, Carlan thought. The Portland cops probably wrote
it off, if they even bothered to check. But as a resident of Bend, Carlan
knew how much someone had to go out of his or her way to reach Bend. It
really wasn't on the road to anywhere important. It was mostly a
destination.
Somehow, the owner of this SUV,
this Jonathon Evers, had begun the morning a block from the scene of a murder
and ended up the following evening in the hometown of the murder
victim.
Carlan hurriedly packed up
to go home. It was three o’clock in the morning. He’d have to convince the motel not to charge
him for the night, but flashing a badge usually did the trick.
One good thing had come out
of the waiting. He'd been thinking about Jamie and her family. His
mind kept returning to Jamie's younger sister, Sylvie. When Carlan had
first started dating Jamie, the girl was only a teenager -- now she was legal.
Twenty-one or twenty-two years old, something like that.
Sylvie was an even more
beautiful woman than Jamie, with the same kind of purity that had drawn Carlan
to Jamie. More purity, actually, since she was that much younger and less
experienced. Jamie had been soiled by the time Carlan got to her -- she'd
lied to him, and it was only after slapping her in the face a few times for her
lies, that she told him the truth. She hadn't been a virgin for years.
Carlan had been willing to
forgive her, if she hadn't run off. But inside, he had recoiled.
The more he thought about
Sylvie, the more he was certain he was that Jamie's death had kept him from
making a big mistake. The younger girl was so much more
appealing.
He'd solve this case, and
present it to her. She'd be grateful, he was sure. She wouldn't be like
Jamie, who hadn’t known when she had it good. Sylvie was the right one
all along.
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