Enter Evil Page 3

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  That was Black, now up from below, frown on his face, cell phone still at his ear.

  I looked to shore, found Bud safely out of sight, so I stopped and jumped down. “Don’t be rude. I had to distract those guys over there because Bud blew his cover.”

  “Where did you learn something like that? What exactly was that, anyway?”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Yeah, it was. Remember that old Seinfeld episode when Elaine tried to dance? That’s what you looked like.”

  Well, now, that was downright tacky and uncalled for. Dancing wasn’t my thing and I knew it. But they hadn’t picked up Bud filming them, and that’s all I cared about. I watched until the foursome entered the front door of the Kangaroo Trapeze, which ended our surveillance and put it officially into the hands of our undercover colleague lurking at the bar. My little Dancing with the Stars routine had brought too much attention to me anyway. Time to go home. Shift over.

  Black was still staring at me. “As horrible as that was, Claire, it still turned me on.”

  “So it wasn’t all that bad, huh?”

  “It doesn’t take much where you’re concerned. Even something like that is arousing.”

  I smiled. He smiled. My eyes lit up. His eyes lit up. My cell phone started up with “The Mexican Hat Dance” song. I smiled wider. He frowned, no doubt knowing his romantic plans were about to hit the dirt.

  Caller ID identified Bud was on the line, so I picked up quickly and said, “Bud, that was a helluva dumb stunt. They almost made you.”

  Bud provided me with an earful of gut laughs. “I saw you tryin’ to dirty dance. Cool. I didn’t know you had it in you. I got it on film. The guys at the station are gonna love it.”

  “I humiliated myself in public so you wouldn’t get beat up, Bud. Please don’t ever make me do something that gross again. Why the hell did you show yourself?”

  “Saw a snake. Thought I better get the hell out.”

  Well, now, that explained it well enough. Bud just got done with a serious, up-close-and-personal encounter with a nasty slitherer, not too long ago, either. I’m surprised he didn’t run like hell. I suspect the topless Calamity Jane had something to do with that.

  Bud said, “You looked sorta like Elaine did on that Seinfeld rerun.”

  I frowned. I was going to have to look up that show and see what they were talking about. “I wasn’t that bad.”

  Bud laughed some more, but then he sobered and said, “Hey, I’m gettin’ a call from dispatch. Hold on a sec.”

  He clicked off for about a minute, then he came back. “We gotta body. Somebody just called in a suicide at the Grand Glaize Bridge.”

  “Water patrol there?”

  Black cursed under his breath, knowing the score from experience, but I was ready for a new case. And a suicide didn’t usually shoot back. But who knows, the way our cases had gone lately, this one just might.

  “Yeah, but the guy didn’t jump. They found him hangin’ under the bridge.”

  “You kidding me? He hung himself instead of jumping off?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s a novel approach.”

  “Who hung himself?” asked Black.

  I ignored him. “You gotta name on the vic, Bud?”

  “Nope. They’ve got the bridge cordoned off, waitin’ for us to get there.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just now gettin’ to the Bronco.”

  “We’ll meet you there.” I glanced at Black for confirmation. He nodded, and now he looked interested, too. His blue eyes were all intense and excited, just like mine. We have that in common, you see.

  Bud said, “Last one there buys Krispie Kremes, chocolate with nuts on top.”

  Now that sounded more like my old Bud. Food on the mind, competition in the blood, donuts on the breath.

  “Get ready to eat our wake, Bud.”

  Bud hung up, and no doubt stomped the gas pedal. Maybe we’d get lucky and he’d run into a traffic jam on his way across the lake.

  I looked at Black. “We got a bridge suicide and I need to get there in a hurry. You up for it?”

  “You bet.”

  Sometimes Black liked my job better than I did. I guess sitting around listening to people lying on couches and whining about their problems got old sometimes.

  As Black expertly maneuvered the powerful Cobalt out of the cove and thrust the throttle to full speed, I jerked on a pair of jeans and black T-shirt over my bathing suit, laced up my hightop Nikes, strapped on both my weapons, looped the chain with my badge around my neck, and felt whole again. I stood next to him in the cockpit and enjoyed the speed and wind blowing through my short and sun-streaked blond hair, and the beautiful red and purple sunset swirled in an Impressionist painting above the trees on the far horizon as we skipped and roared our way across the lake at way too high a speed, but that’s Black and his big, expensive toys for you.

  Yeah, I was going to enjoy the ride over while I could because I sure as hell wasn’t going to enjoy cutting down a suicide victim and telling some family their loved one was gone forever, in the blink of an eye, just like that, never to be seen alive again. Nope, not in my top ten list of fun things to do.

  TWO

  Minutes later we hit the channel and sped off toward the Grand Glaize Bridge, which carried Highway 54 through Osage Beach and over the Grand Glaize arm of the lake, one of the heaviest traveled areas of the county. Lots of rubbernecking Sunday boaters were there ahead of us, floating around the perimeter of the crime scene and trying to see what the police were up to. Water patrol had already cordoned off the area directly underneath the bridge and about thirty yards down each shoreline, but the contingent of the curious continued to gather gleefully as close as they could get, bobbing in the bouncing wakes of arriving police boats. At least twenty pairs of binoculars reflected in the setting sun like cat eyes glowing in a dark alley.

  As we slowed to approach the sandy bank under the bridge supports, a water patrol officer cruised from gawker to gawker, breaking up the party. Luckily, not a single reporter was in sight, but that wouldn’t last long. Black killed the motor and slid the Cobalt up onto the sand. As the hull scraped to a gradual stop, I climbed over the side, jumped out onto the bank, and peered up the hill, where a couple of our deputies were gathered around a concrete support, way, way up from us. I could also see the victim’s body, swaying in a stiff breeze that was now blowing in over the water.

  I said, “Better wait here until I know exactly what’s going down.”

  Black didn’t argue, just took a seat in the pilot’s chair and twisted open another Dixie. He didn’t get to take time off like this often, leisure hours when he could just loll around on a boat all day with me, not with all his business irons in the fire. Even though he was constantly on the phone, I think he was enjoying himself.

  Picking my way around some large limestone rocks, I began the steep climb to the suicide scene. I could see Bud now, up top, looking over the side of the bridge. He’d made good time, too. He waved down at me, pointed to the crime site, and then disappeared from view. Every so often, we got a jumper in Canton County, but nobody had ever hanged themselves off the underside of a bridge, not since I’d been with the department. There’s always a first time for everything, though. I sure had learned that the hard way.

  Our other female deputy, Connie O’Hara, was on the scene ahead of me. She was short and blond and a killer shot with a rifle and a new baby boy named Tucker at home. She was a good cop, one who did her job well and by the book without a lot of drama going on. I liked her. When I approached, she nodded at me and said, “Bud comin’?”

  “He’s on his way down from up there.” We both looked the forty-some-odd feet above us. “You got any ID yet, Connie?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody’s touched the body. But it looks like he’s been out here since at least noon, maybe longer. He’s in full rigor. He did
it way up under there, so it’s hard to see the body from the highway. Nobody reported him from the water, either, believe it or not.”

  I looked down the hill to where Black sat in the beached Cobalt. He was on the phone again but watching me through his high-powered binoculars. I turned back to O’Hara. “Strange place for a suicide, don’t you think?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. You’d think he’d just take the leap and get it over with. It’s far enough down to kill him and a helluva lot quicker.”

  We both judged the distance, and I wondered what it would feel like to fall that far and hit a solid sheet of water. Not good. Probably break a lot of bones, at the very least. “Has anybody called Buckeye Boyd?”

  “We were waiting for you to get here before we called the ME. Want me to give him a call now?”

  “Yeah, do that, would you? Tell him we got a body down here and ask him how fast he can get out to the bridge. You got his cell number?”

  Connie nodded. “Okay, I’m on it.”

  As she started trudging up the nearly vertical incline, Bud was winding his way down through the big rocks and clinging brush toward me, sliding now and then on the loose gravel. Yeah, he’s a bit of a klutz. Frowning, I moved to a spot where I could get a better visual on the body. The man hung suspended from a concrete crossbar, so far up under the bridge that he was more over solid ground than water. From the looks of it, the bottoms of his feet were no more than four or five feet off the steeply inclining hillside. I picked my way across the precarious slope to just underneath the victim and found that the rope around his neck was attached to a concrete shelf above him. Probably tied it up nice and tight, stood up, placed the noose around his neck, then jumped into hell. It probably would’ve broken his neck instantly.

  “Whassup, Claire? I just heard Connie callin’ in Buck.”

  That was Bud, almost to me now. He ran down the last few yards and pulled to a stop a few feet from me. He stared up at the victim and gave a long, low whistle. “Man, why the hell would he wanna end it this way?”

  “Who knows? Wife left him, he lost all his money gambling, was lonely, probably one of the usual reasons. Take your pick. Unless he left us a note and explained everything all nice-like in black-and-white. Now that’d be sweet, wouldn’t it?”

  “He’s just a kid. Pretty young a guy to kick himself off. He’s gotta be in his early twenties, maybe, twenty-five tops.”

  We moved in closer and gazed up at the dangling corpse. I avoided looking at the purple-blue color of his face. He was in rigor all right; his body was as rigid as a window mannequin. He wore a pair of navy blue Dockers and a yellow polo shirt, both neat and clean and pressed with creases in the sleeves and the pant legs. I could see the earring in his right ear, a large diamond stud that kept winking and blinking as he swung stiffly back and forth in the gusting wind. There was a cell phone on the ground about six feet below him.

  “He dropped his cell. See it there, on the rocks?”

  “Maybe he made a good-bye call. That oughta be helpful.”

  “Let’s leave it until forensics get here. Maybe it’ll give us a next of kin.”

  Bud said, “He looks like a clean-cut kinda kid. Clothes brand new by the looks of it and pressed up nice and neat, and that looks like a Ralph Lauren logo on his shirt. I’m guessing that’s a Rolex watch on his wrist.”

  I said, “His tennis shoes aren’t even scuffed, white as the day he bought them, not even much wear on the soles. He’s no blue-collar workingman, believe me.”

  “Maybe he’s a student down at Missouri State in Springfield. Up here to off himself so we’d have something to do tonight.”

  “Just our luck. What’s all that stuff on his arms?”

  “Looks like a bunch of bracelets. What is it, blue and white beads? Man, I bet he’s got twenty on each arm.”

  “What’s up with that? Have you ever seen anybody wearing that many bracelets?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve never seen anybody wearing even one that looks like those.”

  My cell phone erupted into song, and I jerked it off my belt and read Black’s name on caller ID. I punched him on and peered down at him where he now stood in the stern of the boat. He had me focused in again with those high-powered binoculars. Made me feel like an amoeba under a microscope.

  He said, “You ID’d the victim yet?”

  “No. We’re waiting for Buck to cut the rope and lay out the body.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know who it is.”

  Okay, now that hit me like a king-size wallop. “How’d you know who he is? Can you see him that well?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking at his face right now, poor kid. He looks exactly like a boy I treated several years ago. If it’s who I think it is, his name is Michael Murphy. He’s probably around twenty-one or twenty-two now.”

  “Michael Murphy? Why does that ring some kind of bell for me?”

  “Could be because his father is Joseph Murphy, one of the chief political advisors to the governor. He’s on the news all the time, loves the cameras. If you’ll recall, he was the chief strategist for Governor Stanton’s last campaign, the one he won big-time, in a landslide, remember? Another thing, the Murphy family is old money. They own most of the real estate in downtown Jefferson City. They’ve got a lot of holdings in Kansas City, too, and they own some properties around the lake. That’s how I got to know them. We had a couple of investment projects we worked together.”

  “Oh, that Joseph Murphy. A big politico honcho, huh? Sleazy, maybe? Great.”

  “That’s the rumor but I never saw anything unethical going on. The press hates his guts, and vice versa, so they’ll jump all over this. Just thought I’d warn you.”

  “Gee, that’s wonderful news, Black. Bud’s gonna be thrilled.” Bud noticed my sarcasm; he has an ear for it after several years as my partner. I said to him, “Black says this guy’s name is Michael Murphy, son of the great Joseph Murphy, best bud to the governor.”

  “That the rich guy from Jeff City? The one who’s always on TV? He comes off as a real creep.”

  I nodded. “Black says he’s pretty sure it’s that guy’s son.” I spoke to Black again. “Can you be certain, Black? Without coming up here for a closer ID?”

  “You used these binoculars, Claire. It’s like I’m standing right next to him. It’s Mikey, I’d bet my life on it.”

  “Mikey?”

  “That’s what he liked to be called. Insisted on it, actually. His family called him that, too.”

  “You remember his address?”

  “I can get it for you quick enough. Want me to call Miki on her cell and have her look it up for you?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna have to notify next of kin ASAP. He married?”

  “Not when I treated him. He’d just gotten dumped by a girlfriend and was depressed about it. That’s why he came to see me, but I referred him to a colleague.”

  “Why?”

  “His parents asked me to. They wanted him to receive therapy up in Jeff City at a clinic specifically designed to treat teenagers. They knew one of the doctors there.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Martin Young. He’s one of the resident psychiatrists and the name of the clinic is Oak Haven. It’s sort of an old-fashioned-type sanitarium for teenagers. They specialize in young people suffering depression and anxiety, especially those who come in with suicide attempts or suicidal tendencies. It’s a residential program with intensive counseling and academic classes, so they don’t get behind in their studies while they’re there. It’s got a good reputation in the state. Pricey, though, but they get good results, at least that’s what I hear.”

  “The results weren’t exactly spectacular this time, I’d say. Okay, we’ll check it out. Here comes Buck and the guys. Go on home and get something to eat, and I’ll call you later. Bud and I have to notify the family. What time do you fly out for New York?”

  “Tomorrow before noon. I’ll hang out here a little while, then I’
ll take off. Call me if you want me to pick you up later.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Silence for a second or two, then Black said, “This’s a damn shame, Claire. I thought Dr. Young could get him through his problems.”

  “Yeah, this kid’s way too young to die. See you later.”

  “Duck and weave, baby. Don’t call me from the hospital again.”

  Black’s way of telling me to be careful. “Check. Talk to you later.”

  I flipped the phone shut and waited for Buckeye Boyd to navigate the rough terrain down to us. His bushy white hair looked uncombed and messy, probably because the wind was having its way with it, but his beard and mustache were black and close shaven and always impeccably groomed. He was still gimpy from a fall he’d taken on a slippery dock at the last bass fishing tournament he’d entered. He’d won the first-place trophy and lined it up with all his others, but had limped around for weeks. He was scowling big-time at having to negotiate the steep slope, no doubt because he was going to miss American Idol or Survivor. He really dug all those reality shows. Connie was right behind him.

  Shaggy was right behind her, toting his aluminum case. He was limping, too, because he’d gotten shot up pretty bad a few months back, which happened in the same hairy situation with Bud’s girlfriend, but he was getting back into the groove now. He’d made some stupid decisions and paid dearly for them, and he wasn’t the same any more, not the crazy, easygoing surfer pseudo beach boy of days past. At least, he wasn’t back to his old ways yet. I hoped he would be there again one of these days. But he gave me the old grin, and I returned it. Behind those eyes, though, there was this haunted look that wasn’t going away, not anytime soon, anyway.

  Truthfully, I was beginning to wonder if we all weren’t wearing that same expression lately, at least people who hung around me too long. Maybe all the death and destruction in my job was finally getting to me. Maybe I needed to get out of homicide for a while and become a patrol cop and stop speeders, but I knew I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t let go of the hunt. I lived for finding the killers I pursued and really got off on putting them behind bars, if they didn’t end up six feet under first.