Magic City Murder Read online

  She shook her head. “Of course not, that was their daughter. Stephanie was their little princess and got whatever she wanted. I tried to tell her things about Gary, but she would get upset and accuse me of lying.” She shrugged. “So that was my childhood.”

  “Did Stephanie and you get along? There must have been some kind of relationship there if she lived with you.”

  Eve explained, “It was mostly fine. I think in some ways she kind of looked up to me. She asked me for advice, borrowed clothes, did normal sister stuff. We couldn’t talk about our parents though. And as time went by that got to be easier. Mom died and Gary went nuts. He had early onset dementia so at this point I doubt he even remembers me. And I am totally fine with that.”

  I asked, “Why did you keep staying in your parents’ house? Finances?”

  She nodded. “I’ve got one more semester of school and I am out of here. I only do the titty bar on the weekends for extra cash. I’ve been trying to save to get my own place. I was saving for a house, but I think I’m just going to move into an apartment. I can’t go back to that house.”

  I nodded in agreement. “It must have been quite a traumatic experience, finding her there like that,” I said, referring to her sister Stephanie.

  Eve sniffed and hid her face behind a napkin. Her body shook for a few seconds before she sniffed hard and wiped her eyes. “Every time I go in that house, I see her hanging there with her purple face. I can’t get that fucking image out of my head.”

  I reached over and patted her hand. “I know. It’s alright. It’s going to take some time to get past it, but you’ll be fine. You’re a strong and smart young lady.”

  That drew a snort from her and a roll of her eyes. “I don’t feel like any of those things.”

  I gave a half grin. “When you’re numb to everything else, just accept the truth of an unbiased observer.” I didn’t know what the hell I was saying. Comforting grief was never one of my strong suits.

  The waitress appeared with our food and set down a big bottle of syrup. She brought more coffee then disappeared again.

  We ate quietly. “Where are you staying now?” I asked.

  “At a hotel not far from here,” she said.

  I peered around the area outside. “Tell me you’re joking. On this side of town?”

  She shrugged. “It’s cheap. I won’t be there for too long. I’m going to sign a lease next week hopefully and get into an apartment.”

  I stared intently at Eve. “Did you kill your sister?” I asked.

  Her brow furrowed. “What? No! What the fuck is wrong with you?” There were few folks in the diner but her reaction turned a head or two.

  I chuckled and put a hand up. “Okay, okay. I believe you. I just had to know.”

  Eve’s disgust at the question was plain to see. She occasionally made eye contact with me and shook her head. “Stephanie was messed up,” she said finally. “I told you before she was on medication and not acting right.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  We finished the last few bites and got the check. I paid, of course, and walked Eve out to her car. It was extremely late, or early depending on your perception. “Do you live in town?” she asked.

  I laughed. “No, I am about two hours southwest. I’m going to grab some more coffee and hit the road.”

  “I don’t normally invite stalkers back to my place, but my roach motel has a couch you’re welcome to,” she said.

  I shook my head. “As appealing as you make it sound, I think I’m going to get back on the road.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  With that she left. I stopped at a gas station nearby and filled up and then topped off my coffee. It was going to be a long drive back. I sat down in the Jeep and had just buckled my belt when my phone rang. It was Eve.

  “This is going to sound like I’m stalking you now, but there’s some very sketchy shit going on at this place I’m staying and none of my friends will answer the phone. I keep hearing yelling next door and doors slamming. I thought I heard someone say they were going to kill the other.”

  “Wait for a time when no one is outside, then get to your car and come meet me,” I said.

  “Then what?” she asked.

  I mulled over the best course of action for her.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  “We’ll park your car at the gas station I’m at and you can stay with me tonight. I don’t have roaches to entice you with, but I do have a couch.”

  Silence filled the speaker as Eve mulled over my offer. “You’re like way the hell out of town, how about I just follow you so you don’t have to bring me back tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Just get out of that place before you get caught in the crossfire.”

  I told her where I was and about ten minutes later, I saw her car pull up. I gave her a few directions on which way we were going and told her we would have to park her car in Roscoe since the road to my place was just about unpassable. She grabbed an energy drink out of the convenience store, and we headed back to my home.

  We parked her car at the Lion's Paw Tavern, and she hopped in with me. Sam was going to hate my ass. My only saving grace was that I could ask him if he needed the space for all the customers beating the door down in the middle of winter, trying to get in.

  The Jeep jumped down the dirt road covered in snow. I had left the plow off the past couple of days since it had not snowed anymore, and I thought it would make me a little less conspicuous in my investigative activities.

  “Wow you really live out in the middle of nowhere,” said Eve.

  I smiled. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Are you like a Unabomber guy?”

  “No, I have a few more amenities in my cabin. There’s even a toilet.”

  Eve said, “Oh that’s definitely a plus. I bet you have great reviews on TripAdvisor.”

  We made our way through the winding road in the dark and finally reached the community around East Rosebud Lake. Eve had brought a small bag with her.

  It was almost 6 a.m. The sun would be rising soon. I did not feel completely exhausted yet, so I turned on the television. The first Die Hard movie was on. I showed Eve around and told her she could have the futon in the office or the couch in the living room. She chose the futon.

  I sat on the couch and leaned against a pillow. The recliner gave me heartburn when I ate late. Eve came and sat next to me. “Is this the movie where he says, ‘Yippy ki yay motherfucker?”

  I laughed. “I think he said that in all of them.”

  We watched the movie for a while until everything faded away.

  When I woke up the next morning, I was still on the couch but was laying down. Eve was cuddled up on top of me. At some point during the night, one of us had draped a blanket over both of us. She looked incredibly peaceful as she slept.

  For some reason as she lay there on me, deep in her slumber, I thought of Sonia. I remembered the early days when we had started dating and would stay up all night watching movies and wake up tangled up together. Suddenly, the realization I was letting someone with some serious daddy issues get too close set in. I slipped out from under Eve and went to my room and showered. When I came out, she was still sleeping so I made coffee.

  I had been so focused on other things I had forgotten about Stephanie’s laptop. In my office, I sat it up and tried logging in. It was a MacBook that was password protected. I tried a few things off the top of my head like her birthday, and some common ones like “password” and “1234.” Nothing obvious worked.

  From the kitchen, I could hear movement. A few seconds later, Eve appeared in the doorway. “Sorry, I didn’t make it off the couch last night.”

  I smiled and nodded. “I don’t guess I did either.”

  “What are you working on?” she asked.

  I pointed at the laptop and told her it was password protected and I could not get in.

  “Try ‘Gandalf,’” she said.

&nbs
p; “Gandalf?” I asked. “

  Eve nodded. “I think that’s what she used to use as a password. It was the name of our dog. He died a year ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said as I typed. The screen changed and I was in. “Thanks for the tip, I’ll mess with this stuff later. We should probably get you back to Billings.”

  Eve seemed a little dejected. “You’re probably right.”

  I retrieved some cash from my room and then drove Eve back to her car. It was noon and the bar was open. I gave her the extra cash I had taken out and made her promise to get a decent hotel until she could get into an apartment. At first, she was too proud to take the money and then finally gave in. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and departed.

  Sam was working the bar when I stepped in to get a quick sandwich. “Who’s your friend? New squeeze?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Client,” I said.

  He threw up his hands in disgust. “You need to get you a woman. All you do is sit in that goddamn cabin and play with yourself.”

  I raised an eyebrow to him, and he brought over a beer. “Your usual?” he asked.

  My head nodded.

  “Young thing like that, I would have a heart attack if I had a piece of ass like her,” he said.

  I agreed. “Me too, so I sent her on her way.”

  “Bah, you’re just a damn kid. What are you 50?” he asked.

  “The wrong side of it,” I replied.

  “Balls haven’t even dropped I bet. You need a woman before people start thinking you’re queer. Not that I care, I voted for Obama,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I think you’re supposed to say homosexual now,” I said.

  Sam retrieved my sandwich and set it in front of me. “What were you saying?”

  “I said it’s going to be another beautiful day,” I replied.

  Sam nodded and sipped coffee. “Damn right it is.”

  Chapter 7

  After Eve left and I got my stomach filled, I went back to the cabin and fell asleep. It was early Monday morning before I awoke. I guess I was more tired than I thought. I tried to see what I could find on Stephanie’s computer but there was not much of anything I could see that looked suspicious. I had remembered that Stephanie appeared to have an iPhone and I wondered if there was some way of locating it with the laptop. My government phone used to have a utility to find it in case it was lost, surely there was something similar for privately owned phones.

  A little after 11 a.m., I called Noel because I figured he would be at lunch at school. I explained my idea and he verified that yes, that was something that could possibly be done. He guided me to the app that was called, of all things, Find My iPhone. A few clicks later and I had the last location of Stephanie’s phone. I tinkered with the map and realized the last location appeared to be a bridge that went across the Yellowstone River. “Shit,” I said. “That phone is gone.”

  “You can also look into her browser history and see if maybe she was on Facebook,” said Noel.

  That was a brilliant idea. I had not even thought of checking social media. He guided me to the browser history on the MacBook and I saw that she had indeed spent considerable time on Facebook. When I typed the address into the web browser, a Facebook account was already signed in. The person in the profile picture, however, was not Stephanie; it was someone named Mariza. She did not even look remotely like Stephanie. The picture had to be a Brazilian model. I explained to Noel what I was looking at.

  There were timeline posts and multiple pictures that appeared to be the same girl. Noel had me do a reverse image search on some of the photos and they came up on the internet as belonging to a bikini model from Colombia.

  I looked into her message history and read aloud some things I was finding. There were multiple exchanges with guys. As I read them, Noel stopped me and explained how to change the settings so the profile would appear to be offline. I did as he said and then he explained, “She was catfishing.”

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “She was pretending to be someone else and tricking all these guys. There’s a show on MTV all about this stuff,” said Noel.

  I was way out of touch with today’s youth. “So, what’s the benefit of pretending to be someone else. At some point, they’re going to find out, right?”

  Noel said, “Some people try to get money out of other people. Some just seem to be missing something in their lives and want attention. Some are just evil and want to mess with other people.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Man, you kids are weird.”

  “I guess,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to class. I’ll help you more later.”

  I thanked him and then went into the living room and scrolled through the satellite channels. I didn’t even realize I had MTV. I set a few episodes of Catfish to record and went back to researching.

  Later that evening I watched the show. All I could think was, “Man, people are fucked up...”

  One particular profile and exchange seemed to stick out more than the others. Most guys she was talking to seemed to lose interest when she would not provide a phone number for them to call and she would always decline the video requests when they wanted to see her. This one poor guy named Raymond seemed to buy into her stories completely.

  From what I could gather from the conversation and the profile used by Raymond, he was a college student at Montana State University in Bozeman and was there on a football scholarship. He was originally from Louisiana and seemed a little naive to the world. Something I noticed with the majority of the guys Stephanie had been messaging with the false profile, they were all black. I wondered if this was some taboo fantasy she had been playing out online and never taken it offline because of her upbringing or her own personal biases.

  Raymond had given his phone number to Stephanie while she was pretending to be Mariza. I wondered if Stephanie had ever called him or if their relationship had been completely through Facebook. They seemed to have grown close. The messaging had been going on for about three months. It seemed like he had initiated the contact. Apparently, they had shared musical interests and he had responded to a comment she made on an artist’s page. The conversation went private from there.

  As I read through the messages, I felt like I was intruding on someone’s life. I saw two people sharing their innermost feelings and fears and desires. When I had heard about people trying online dating, I figured it would mostly be an exchange of nude pictures and heavy breathing over the telephone. I learned that Raymond was a wide receiver and very worried about losing his scholarship because he was not playing that well. It seemed he would have another year to prove himself, but he would have to focus and work hard.

  The messages stopped a couple of weeks before Stephanie’s death. Raymond was growing frustrated with the situation. He felt they should be able to meet or at least video chat. Something that seemed normal because what they were doing felt very abnormal. Stephanie had rebuked him and finally just stopped responding. There were a few days of messages from Raymond begging her to stop ignoring him and then it stopped.

  I checked Raymond’s profile. He had not posted anything on it since he and Stephanie had stopped corresponding. I hoped he was okay. I checked the news sites and saw nothing about him. That was a positive sign, I guess. He had given Stephanie his phone number multiple times. I decided to ring him up and see if he had any interest in speaking with me. The most obvious reaction I would get from him was one of anger and betrayal.

  The phone rang several times before going to a message that stated the voicemail had not been set up. Of course not, why would it be? Young people did not leave messages anymore, they just texted. I decided to think like a college student. I texted Raymond, “My name is John Lockhart, I’m a private investigator. I need to speak to you about Mariza.”

  It did not take long for my phone to ring.

  “What do you know about Mariza?” he asked.

  “Her name is not Mari
za, I know that much,” I replied.

  He snorted. “I figured as much. It seemed a little odd when she would never want to meet or Facetime. What do you need, man?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about the person who actually is Mariza but I would rather do it in person. Would you mind meeting me at a library or coffee shop?” I asked.

  There was silence on the phone. I looked at my handset to make sure he had not hung up on me. “I guess,” he said with a sigh. “If you know who she really is, then I have quite a few questions for you too.”

  We met later that evening. I would have to get on the road if I would make it to Bozeman. Just like Billings, it was about a two-hour drive. I grabbed my notepad and headed out the door.

  Raymond had agreed to meet me at a swanky coffee shop downtown. If there was one thing Bozeman had no shortage of, it was swanky places. It had gone through a technology boom around the turn of the century as many cities did. Californians descended on the city with their lust for good food and aesthetically pleasing buildings. They also drove up property values so people originally from the area found it hard to afford to stay.

  After a short negotiation on exactly what type of black coffee I wanted, I grabbed it and walked over to a young man who looked like the Raymond who I had seen in the pictures. He was still wearing a heavy coat and had what looked to be an orange juice in front of him.

  “Raymond?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I showed him my identification and sat down.

  “So, you know about Mariza?” he asked.

  I nodded, “I do. I’m also curious about how much you know. Did you realize that was not her real name?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to believe it was someone else because she was fine and we connected, you know? But after a while, she was just acting suspicious. I thought maybe she might be lying but I didn’t want to believe it. Then, she just kind of shut me out so I’ve been trying to move on.” Raymond mostly looked down at the table when he talked. He seemed to have a problem making eye contact. Then again, a lot of younger people did when they were uncomfortable.