Magic City Murder Read online

  “We could count snowflakes, that would kill a few days,” said Noel.

  I rolled my eyes and made a drink before settling in my chair. I guess I could have picked a more interesting place for teenagers than the one I had chosen for my exile. The damned thing about it though is that most of the time places like Roscoe choose you.

  After a few hours of television, Noel went to bed. I sat reclined half asleep and half awake. I mustered enough consciousness to shut off the television. My mind mostly drifted and listened to the silence in the cabin. I kept thinking back to when everything changed or as I usually explained, “when shit went sideways.”

  I had been at home sick with the flu and expected the call to come at some point, I just didn’t know when. The day when I felt my absolute worst just happened to be that day. My work cell phone rang, “This is John,” I said as I answered.

  “Agent Lockhart, this is Mike Baumer with OPR,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Those are three letters that will make an FBI employee’s asshole clench up tighter than if he had said IRS. The Office of Professional Responsibility was the internal affairs of the FBI, the rat squad. Any investigation of unprofessional conduct or policy violations went through them. In general, it was pretty damn hard to get rid of a tenured civil service employee. There were a few things you did not mess around with though. You didn’t mess with your confidential sources, you didn’t steal money, and you didn’t drink and drive your duty vehicle. Sonia had screwed up with the last one.

  One night after work, she did not have time to drive all the way home and switch vehicles before meeting up with some of her friends for a birthday party. Sonia had a couple of margaritas and sideswiped the neighbor’s truck parked on the street as she was pulling into our driveway. The damage was fairly insignificant to the neighbor’s truck. His truck did not fit in the garage because it was a big Ford F350 Super Duty with a huge brush guard on the front. Sonia had scraped the back panel of her Dodge Durango across the front corner of the brush guard on the truck. The truck looked untouched, but the Durango had a large silver scrape and dent that ran for over a foot.

  We decided the best course of action was to ignore it and hope no one noticed for a while. Then, Sonia could just say she did not understand and someone must have clipped her in a parking lot. Unfortunately, the next day, someone noticed. Her boss noticed. When he asked Sonia what had happened, she fumbled around a bit and said she was not quite sure. She had already been in hot water two years earlier when she cussed out her previous supervisor. She got a week on the beach for that one, and by beach, I mean she was suspended without pay for five days.

  Sonia and I put our heads together and I insisted on taking the blame. It would eventually turn into an OPR investigation, but I would say she was parked behind me in the garage and when I was shuffling her car out to move mine, I scraped the neighbor’s vehicle. She agreed.

  Two inspectors from OPR came to the Dallas Office and we both met with them individually. I went first and told the story of how I backed her Durango out of the driveway and must have hit the neighbor’s truck out front. I said I did not realize I had done it at the time and did not notice it until Sonia’s supervisor had pointed it out. The inspectors listened to my story, thanked me and that was that.

  I didn’t have a chance to talk to Sonia until after the workday was over. She came home in tears. “Tell me you didn’t take the blame,” she said.

  “What?” I asked. “That was the plan. It was my fault and you fumbled your explanation to your boss because you were flustered since you had been in trouble previously. That’s what you told them right?”

  She put her head in my chest and sobbed harder than I had ever heard. I gently patted her back and told her everything would be fine. She shook her head then looked up at me. Her brown eyes were red, and tears flowed freely from them. “They knew everything, I had to tell them everything,” she said.

  I put a hand on each of her arms and pushed her a few inches away. “What do you mean you told them everything? Those guys fuck with people for a living, it’s what they do. What did you tell them, Sonia?” My voice began to raise which made her cry harder. “What did you tell them?” I demanded.

  She sniffed. “I told them I had drinks and then hit the truck. I told them you were going to lie to cover for me, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  The blood went out of my head and I felt like I was about to pass out. Breathing was a good idea, I started to breathe again.

  “Please don’t be mad, I don’t know what they’ll do to me, but I’ll just face it,” she explained.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I asked.

  She squinted and wiped her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m pretty sure you fucked us both,” I said.

  I was right, but she was right too. The secretary for the Special Agent in Charge had also been at the same restaurant as Sonia that night and had seen her drinking and then get into her vehicle. Since Sonia came clean and was a double minority because she was a Hispanic woman, she was given a month off. That actually worked out to be a month and a half because it was thirty workdays, not days total. Me? I would be fired for lying. If there is one thing law enforcement agencies hate it’s lack of candor. I knew that and took the risk anyway, and that’s what happened. Until that point I had actually a decent reputation within the Bureau. My boss called in all the favors he could, and we worked it out so I could retire early, lose a lot of money, and still get some kind of pension before OPR would take action on me.

  Just like that, my career was over. Sonia had spent a month and half crying at home and avoiding me when I was there. I was still working during the time she was suspended and was out the door about a month after she went back to work. Our relationship had become a mess. I was very resentful towards her. At the time I felt like I had tried to do the right thing by her and failed. I began drinking heavily and wishing I had just told the truth to the inspectors and let the chips fall. My anger at her slowly faded and turned to anger at myself. I had heard stories about people screwing up their career because of something that seemed completely stupid to everyone else. For once, I could identify with those whose stories I had heard about. It did not seem stupid at the time, it made perfect sense. In hindsight, it was incredibly stupid.

  Sonia and I had a long talk one evening and came to our present arrangement. I needed to leave, and she needed me to leave. We had become poisonous for one another. She could not move on at work knowing she was going to come home to me and have a reminder her career was still alive, albeit on life support, while mine was laying tits up in a pasture.

  I had no idea where to go so I spent some time just traveling. I went on a mini tour of national parks and ended up in Yellowstone. I had heard the Beartooth Pass was one of the most scenic roads in the country, so I made my way up it and I guess something happened while I was up there staring at the snow-capped mountains and the small lakes between them. My heart had been left in Texas, but I had found my soul again in those mountains. During the next few months I looked at property and found a cabin on East Rosebud Lake for a decent price but with a catch. I had to be the caretaker for the community during the winter months when no one else would be there. I was assured it just entailed calling the sheriff if I saw that someone’s home had been broken into or vandalized, so it did not seem so bad. I could use some alone time anyway. So, I sold my 2-wheel drive pickup, bought an old Jeep and have been making it work since then.

  Adapting to mountain life did not take long, though there were a few learning curves. I severely underestimated the snow, so the first winter I became very good at fishing very quickly as the amount of food I had stocked the cabin with had dwindled. The road was almost impassable even in the Jeep. That’s when I had the bright idea of having a plow mounted on the front.

  I survived and learned and felt like I was growing again. I got my private investigator’s license and sent out some letters to companies and placing
ads with what I was willing and capable of doing. I got to know a few folks in town and a couple around the lake. The folks to whom I lived the closest were probably the most distant as socializing went. Most were fairly wealthy and always wanted a cabin in the mountains of Montana. So, they bought one and made use out of it now and then during the warm months. Some rented their place out when they were not using it which seemed like a smarter thing to do rather than just have a house or cabin sit there vacant. To each his own, I guess.

  In the mornings, I would walk down to the lake and sit by the shore just gazing out over the water and at the beauty of the mountains and forests around me. Occasionally, I would see a deer or, if I was lucky, a moose would come to the water for a drink. I say the mountains gave me my soul back and also renewed my relationship with God. I’m not a bible thumper but I couldn’t look at all the beauty around me and believe it came into existence by accident. I asked God to forgive me for my past transgressions and hoped that one day I could forgive myself.

  The seasons would change, Noel would visit and then leave again, I would take a job here and there to have extra money coming in when I could. I would have been happy had I not been alone. Sonia and I seemed like complete strangers now. We had Noel in common and I guess that was something that would never change and would always tether us together in a way. I knew we could never go back to just being the way we were, but I wanted to be more to her than just a stranger on the other side of the country. I didn’t know if she wanted that as well or how to fix it. So instead of doing something about it I rinsed and repeated each day hoping something would change. Some would say that’s the definition of crazy.

  Chapter 3

  It was another beautiful morning; the sun was glistening off the snow and flickering across the water of the lake. The wind quietly rustled amongst the branches of the evergreens and made the tallest of them creak as they gently swayed back and forth. The temperature was only in the mid-20s so Noel and I had done a little snowshoeing.

  For the uneducated, snowshoeing is basically winter hiking. You wear snowshoes, obviously, a thick coat, and use trekking poles. We were just putting our coats on when my phone rang. It was Stephanie.

  “Mr. Lockhart, I’m really sorry about yesterday,” she said. “My car wouldn’t start and then I couldn’t find my phone. A friend came over and gave me a ride to the coffee shop, but I guess you were already gone.”

  I sighed. “It’s no problem. When would you like to meet?” I asked.

  “How about tomorrow at the same place?” she asked.

  I agreed. We decided to meet at about lunch so she could speak with me between classes. She had been a little concerned about my fee, so I told her I would give her a student discount.

  We hung up, and then Noel and I went trekking through the snow. The air was crisp and clean, but we had agreed earlier just to make a loop around the lake. I had brought my camera and snapped the occasional picture of a snow-covered tree that for whatever reason seemed more interesting than the one standing next to it. We had seen a bald eagle soaring overhead, but I was too slow to get a picture.

  When we got to the halfway point, we found a boulder to lean up against and rest. Noel was panting fairly hard which made me feel good about my own health but slightly concerned about his.

  “Don’t get much exercise in the city?” I asked

  Noel shook his head.

  “You need to look up from that phone once in a while and get out there, appreciate the world around you,” I said.

  He cocked a curious eyebrow at me. He said, “In Dallas? I would probably end up getting shot.”

  “You can’t avoid life,” I said. “And it never fails, the things that will give you the most problems throughout your life will be things you never thought of.”

  “Oh great,” said Noel.

  “What do you do out there when you’re not in school?” I asked.

  Noel shrugged. “Mess around on the internet on my computer or phone. Play games sometimes,” he said.

  I had made no efforts to keep up with technology when I left the Bureau. This old dog was tired of learning new tricks. It seemed like anything technical was becoming more complicated but sold under the guise of being easy to use.

  “OK, so what do you do on the internet?”

  “Watch a lot of tutorial videos. I’ve been learning programming and some networking stuff,” he explained.

  I was kind of impressed. “Well, that actually seems fairly productive.” I thought back to the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick where he played a kid who almost wiped us and the Russians out by hacking into a supercomputer because instead of Tic Tac Toe, he wanted to play Global Thermonuclear War. “Just be careful where you go poking around.”

  Noel chuckled. “Well, I mostly poke around my own phone. I’ve been experimenting with programming apps for my phone.”

  “What kind of apps?” I asked.

  Noel shrugged. “Nothing that’s finished yet. If I get one done, maybe I’ll show you,” he said.

  I could relate to being young and lacking confidence. When I was his age, I was pretty much the same way. It was not until I got out of college and into the real world everyone warns you about that I actually felt confident. Instead of having parents or professors criticize me, I had bosses and co-workers who appreciated when I was doing a good job. Being around professional people who felt like they were on the same level as me was therapeutic.

  Not that my first job after leaving college was that great, but I needed to get experience from somewhere. I got a position with Probation and Parole in Louisville, Kentucky. After I had been there a year, I became a professional job applier. I applied for anything I could and somehow got on at the FBI as an intelligence analyst. After a year, I applied to be an agent and got in fairly easily since I was already an employee. The hardest part was getting the first job. If you can sneak a toe behind the federal door, then you push a foot and eventually push your way through the halls to where you want to be.

  We headed back and had a quiet evening at the cabin. I made chili out of some venison from one of my hunting excursions a month before. Noel seemed to like it as he emptied his bowl and filled up another. I warned him if he was too gassy, he was going to sleep outside.

  The next morning, I poured my coffee and turned on the television. The local news had a story breaking about a body found in Billings the night before. They did not name the victim but described her as a female who had attended college at MSU Billings. Something about the story did not sit right with me. I grabbed my phone and dialed Stephanie’s number just to confirm our later meeting. The phone went straight to voicemail.

  I did a search through some public information databases with Stephanie’s phone number and found her address. My stomach tightened as I saw that it was near MSU Billings. I pulled up Google street view and found what the house looked like. Then, I rewound the DVR I had on my satellite and went back to when they were reporting the death. The reporter had been standing outside the front of an older white house that was a craftsman style. I paused the DVR when the reporter was standing out front and compared the snow-covered lawn to the pictures on the computer taken during warmer months. It was the same house. I did what any reasonable person would do, I dialed the number several more times and listened to the call go straight to voicemail.

  The news had said no foul play was yet suspected, but police were investigating. I needed to get up there. If it was Stephanie York who had died, I needed to know why. She had called me before saying she thought she was going crazy and then was unable to meet me. It was completely possible she had mental health issues. If that was the case, then I needed to know for my own peace of mind.

  I told Noel he was on his own today. He didn’t seem to mind much. I grabbed some coffee, hopped in the Jeep and again headed towards Billings.

  I didn’t bother going to the police department. The coroner is the one who was going to have the most information. Someone had to d
ecide if the death was accidental, a suicide, murder, or natural causes.

  Stephanie’s voice replayed in my head. She had told me she thought someone wanted her to think she was crazy. Had someone been gaslighting her? Was she off her meds? Was she just going through an emotional time? I was also not completely sure the body referenced on television was hers. It could have been her sister who she was living with though my gut feeling was that it was not the sister. The whole thing just had a weird feeling to it and the little voice inside of me was telling me to find out more.

  My old Jeep turned into the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Department. I had been there a handful of times, but never to the coroner’s office. I hoped he or she was nice and didn’t tell me to fuck off immediately.

  As I sat in the parking lot, I suddenly had a half decent idea. I called Deputy Phil Jones. He answered and sounded groggy. “This your day off?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what’s up, John?” he asked.

  “Are you familiar with the coroner at Yellowstone county?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s great, you need something from her?”

  She? That was positive. Maybe I could turn on the charm. “I was going to meet with a potential client, but I think she may have been found dead last night.”

  “Well, that’s not good for business,” Jones replied.

  I chuckled. “No, not exactly.”

  “I’ll give her a call, she’ll probably want to talk to you since you had some contact with the victim, if it’s the same person.”

  “Thanks, Phil.” I hung up.

  A few minutes later I walked into the office and asked for the coroner. I was told to wait and after about a minute, a lady with short brown hair, who was slightly taller than average came to fetch me. She had a firm handshake. Judging by her build, I would guess she was a runner or a health nut at the very least. It made me a little self-conscious of my own gut that had started to sag over my belt.